Existensialism Jacob Golomb-In Search of Authenticity_ Existentialism From Kierkegaard to Camus (Problems of Modern European Thought) (1995)

In Search of Authenticity

‘This man has, I repeat, no place in a community whose basic principles he flouts withoutcompunction…’. I tried to explain that it was because of the sun, but I was only tooconscious that it sounded nonsensical… I explained that I didn’t believe in God… I told him that I wasn’t conscious of any ‘sin’; all I knew was that I’d been guilty of a criminal offence…

In Camus’s The Outsider, Meursault’s struggle with authenticity leads to his beingjudged more than just a criminal. Other fictional heroes, or anti-heroes, have been created by philosophers to explore certain ideas or theories: like Meursault, Kierkegaard’s Abraham, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Sartre’s Mathieu all embody the contradictions of trying to live outside society’s accepted norms.

Jacob Golomb’s In Search of Authenticity examines these characters in his analysis ofthe ethics of authenticity. His own passionate commitment to the quest for such an idealis clearly evident in his writing. Golomb is particularly concerned that postmodernismdevalues the subjectivity and pathos that inextricably link an individual’s search for authenticity. He argues that this search is now all the more pertinent and relevant whenset against the general disillusionment characterizing the mood of the late twentiethcentury.

In Search of Authenticity provides invaluable insight into the heroes and anti-heroes of the great Continental philosophers. Like them it marries philosophy and literature bylooking at the rational model of ethics compared with the romantic ideal of authenticity.Consequently, it will prove vital reading for students of both philosophy and literature.

Jacob Golomb is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is author of Nietzsche’s Enticing Philosophy of Power (1989) and Introduction to the Philosophies of Existence (1990)

PROBLEMS OF MODERN EUROPEAN THOUGHT

Series Editors

Alan Montefiore

Jonathan Rée

Jean-Jacques Lecercle

Also published in the series:

Situation and Human Existence Freedom, Subjectivity and Society

Sonia Kruks

Philosophy at the Limit David Wood

Poetics of Imagining Richard Kearney

IN SEARCH OF AUTHENTICITY

From Kierkegaard to Camus

JACOB GOLOMB

London and New York

First published 1995 by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledges collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1995 Jacob Golomb

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,

mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any

information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Golomb, Jacob

In search of authenticity/Jacob Golomb. p. cm.—(Problems of modern European thought)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-415-11946-4—ISBN 0-415-11947-2 (pbk.)

1. Authenticity (Philosophy) 2. Existential ethics. I. Title. II. Series.

B105.A8G65 1995 179ಾ.9–dc20 94–43130

CIP

ISBN 0-203-00679-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-22454-X (Adobe eReader format) ISBN 0-415-11946-4 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-11947-2 (pbk)

This book is dedicated to my daughter Orianne, in the hope

that, having been born an individual, she will not turn into a copy.

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Contents

Editors’ Foreword viii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 111 Authenticity, sincerity and honesty 152 Authenticity, literature and irony 233 Kierkegaard’s ironic ladder to authentic faith 344 Nietzsche’s pathos of authenticity 605 Heidegger’s ontology of authenticity 756 Sartre: from phenomenological ontology to psychoanalysis and politics 1047 Camus’s return to authentic human morality 133 Conclusion: Authenticity and ethics 157 Bibliography 162 Index 166

Editors’ foreword

During most of the twentieth century, philosophers in the English-speaking world have had only partial and fleeting glimpses of the work of their counterparts in continentalEurope. In the main, English-language philosophy has been dominated by the exactingideals of conceptual analysis and even of formal logic, while ‘Continental philosophy’ has ventured into extensive substantive discussions of literary, historical, psychoanalyticand political themes. With relatively few exceptions, the relations between the twotraditions have been largely uncomprehending and hostile.

In recent years, however, Continental writers such as Heidegger, Adorno, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Habermas, Foucault, Althusser, Lacan and Derrida have been widely read inEnglish translation, setting the terms of theoretical debate in such fields as literature,social theory, cultural studies, Marxism and feminism. The suspicions of the analyticalphilosophers have not, however, been pacified; and the import of such Continentalphilosophy has mostly been isolated from original philosophical work in English.

The PROBLEMS OF MODERN EUROPEAN THOUGHT series is intended to help break down this isolation. The books in the series will be original philosophical essays intheir own right, from authors familiar with the procedures of analytical philosophy. Eachbook will present a well-defined range of themes from Continental philosophy, and will presuppose little, if any, formal philosophical training of its readers.

Alan Montefiore Jonathan Rée

Jean-Jacques Lecercle

Acknowledgements

As in other matters that concern authenticity, this book is a product of personal pathos aswell as fruitful interaction with others. The space is insufficient to mention all those whocontributed, but the most significant assistance was generously provided me by thefollowing: Alan Montefiore, who trusted me to do the job; Jonathan Rée, whose patience, encouragement and many helpful suggestions made his maieutic role invaluable; and EvaShorr, who read some chapters. Special thanks to Nessa Olshansky-Asthar, whose meticulous linguistic editing has made this book readable.

I also wish to express my gratitude to the S.H.Bergman Center for Philosophical Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for its financial support, and to theThyssen Stiftung for enabling me to visit the Nietzsche and Heidegger archives. Finally, I wish to thank the editors of Philosophy Today and The International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, where earlier versions of the chapters on Nietzsche andKierkegaard were published.

To them, and to the many others who were part of this journey, I can only say that I have tried my best to be worthy of the trust placed in me.

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Introduction

This is the first fictional description in modern philosophical literature of an authentichero and the problematics such a hero entails. Unable to point to any historical figurewho could be objectively judged an authentic individual, Kierkegaard used the Biblical(or mythological) figure of Abraham to exemplify authentic faith.

Nietzsche, too, unable to come up with any historical example of an authentic hero, orÜbermensch, instead portrays the fictional figure of Zarathustra:

When Zarathustra was thirty years old he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains. Here he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not tire of it. But at last a change came over his heart, and one morning he rose with the dawn, stepped before the sun, and spoke to it thus:

‘You great star, what would your happiness be had you not those for whom you shine?…I must descend to the depths, as you do in the evening’…

Human existence is uncanny and still without meaning…. I will teach men the meaning of their existence—the overman….

Like the sun, Zarathustra too wants to go under; now he sits and waits, surrounded by broken old tablets and new tablets half covered with writing. Behold, here is a new tablet…. Man is something that must be overcome…. God died: now we want the overman to live.2

I have not found any reliable example of the knight of faith…. Here he is…. I clasp my hands and say half aloud, ‘Good Lord, is this the man?…Why he looks like a tax-collector!’…He tends to his work…. Toward evening he walks home, his gait is as indefatigable as that ofthe postman. On his way he reflects that his wife has surely a speciallittle warm dish prepared for him…. He lives as carefree as a ne’er-do-well, and yet…he does not do the least thing except by virtue of theabsurd…what a tremendous paradox faith is, a paradox which iscapable of transforming a murder into a holy act well-pleasing to God, a paradox which gives Isaac back to Abraham, which no thought canmaster, because faith begins precisely there where thinking leavesoff… The ethical expression for what Abraham did is, that he wouldmurder Isaac; the religious expression is, that he would sacrificeIsaac… This contradiction consists the dread which can well make aman sleepless, and yet Abraham is not what he is without this dread.1

More recent work by existentialist philosophers also makes much use of fictive portraits,biographies and diaries of heroes of authenticity. Sartre’s hero in Road to Freedom is depicted as follows:

Mathieu stiffened, and threw an agonised look at the driver’s back: all his freedom had come back on him once more. ‘No’, he thought, ‘no, it isn’t heads and tails. Whatever happens, it is by my agency that everything must happen.’… Even if he let himself be carried off like an old sack of coal, he would have chosen his own damnation: he was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate: to marry, to give up the game, to drag this dead weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good nor Evil unless he brought them into being…. He was alone, enveloped in this monstrous silence, free and alone, without assistance and without excuse, condemned to decide without support from any quarter, condemned for ever to be free.3

In Sartre’s play The Flies, which is in large part a debate between God (Jupiter) and Man(Orestes), the latter proclaims defiantly:

Alien to myself, I know it. Outside of nature, against nature, without excuse, without recourse save myself. But I shall not return under your law; I’m condemned to have no other law but my own. Nor shall I return to nature, where a thousand paths are marked out, all leading up to you. I can only follow my own path. For I’m a man…and each man must find his own way.4

Sartre’s fellow-thinker, and later his ideological antagonist, Camus, presents his own heroof authenticity in The Outsider:

Every nerve in my body was a steel spring, and my grip closed on the revolver. The trigger gave, and the smooth underbelly of the butt jogged my palm…. I fired four shots more into the inert body, on which they left no visible trace. And each successive shot was another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing…. The prosecutor paused again, to wipe the sweat off his face: “This man has, I repeat, no place in a community whose basic principles he flouts without compunction….’ I tried to explain that it was because of the sun, but I was only too conscious that it sounded nonsensical…. I explained that I didn’t believe in God…. I told him that I wasn’t conscious of any ‘sin’; all I knew was that I’d been guilty of a criminal offence…. I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still.5

The thematic connection between these heroes is their wish to transcend their social andethical predicaments and achieve authentic modes of living. Not content with being theheroes and heroines of their life-stories, they strive to write these stories themselves.

They want to attain authenticity by being faithful to scripts they have written forthemselves.

But even the concept of ‘heroes of authenticity’ is problematic, since a hero is one admired for outstanding achievements and noble qualities which reflect the prevalentvalues of his community, or what I shall call the prevailing ‘ethos’. Yet one of the main characteristics of these ‘heroes’ is their desperate attempt to transcend this ethos and attain a personal and subjective pathos (in terms of a particular experience, feeling orsentiment) which expresses their individuality as human beings who become what theysingularly are. ‘Anti-heroes’ may be a better term for these characters.

The quest for authenticity becomes especially pronounced in extreme situations. These include not only personal and external crises, but also significant social and historicalcrises such as that arising from the decline of the powerful and long-enduring ethos of objectivity, rationality and enlightenment. Using Nietzsche’s terms, this era of the ‘twilight of the idols’ and the ‘death of God’ reopens the issues of personal identity and meaning frequently referred to as central dilemmas of the postmodern world. However,the ‘sun’ which inspires Zarathustra to ‘descend to the depths’ in order to entice people into becoming authentic, is the same sun that blinds Meursault and provokes him tocommit murder. Thus the crucial question is whether Dostoevsky’s dictum ‘were there no God, everything would be permitted’ is relevant in the context of authenticity.

Our story of these unusual heroes will start with Abraham, the authentic ‘knight of faith’ who lives ‘within the religious sphere’. It is God who prevents him from becominga criminal, from murdering his son Isaac. By virtue of his passionate and absurd belief,Abraham becomes the first modern hero of authenticity. Our story ends, however, withanother kind of hero—almost the antithesis of Abraham—Meursault, the non-believer in Camus’s Outsider, who is ‘guilty of a criminal offence’. He is, indeed, a murderer, whose attempt to live authentically leads to the guillotine. In Meursault’s strictly immanent world there is no God, no supernatural agency, no universal reason to keep one frombecoming a criminal, a moral ‘outsider’. These heroes illustrate the dilemmas and criticalquestions I grapple with here: is there no middle ground between the ‘inhuman monster wholly without moral sense’, as the prosecutor calls Meursault,6 and the religious knight of faith? Can authenticity be a viable ethical norm? Can its ‘heroes’ find a place in a community? Or is it a romantic ideal, an immature protest against the levelling processesof the unidimensional objectivity that dominates our modern, excessively technologicalcivilization? If the latter is indeed the case, why bother at all? What is the point of theenormous effort made by so many serious European thinkers to provoke us intoembracing authenticity, if there seems to be little chance that it can be realized? Must webe content with postulating authenticity as an ideal to aspire to rather than a viable socialnorm—an ideal that is nevertheless necessary if we are to become what we are given acultural and social context that undermines this authentic selfhood?

Before reaching any conclusions about authenticity and ethics, I use the first twochapters of this book to point to certain motifs and problems inherent in any attempt toanalyse authenticity; then, in the remaining chapters, I explore in chronological order themost important of these attempts, by way of examining their philosophical and literarymanifestations.

Yet the question ‘Why bother at all?’ can also be posed regarding this study, and may

well concern its potential readers, given that today the ideal of existential authenticity isout of fashion not only among analytic philosophers (who have, of course, never beenkeen on it) but also in other traditions. I witnessed this disparagement of authenticity atfirst hand in 1987, while attending a lecture on ‘False Emotions’ by a well-known philosopher in Oxford. After the lecture, I questioned the legitimacy of the distinction between authentic and inauthentic emotions; to which he replied that he had no interest inthe ‘crazy notions of Continental philosophy’. It is hardly surprising that it is unfashionable to speak of authenticity today. It is nonetheless surprising that this notionwas so fashionable in the 1950s, for fashion and authenticity are virtually antithetical: theformer by definition an expression of the current ethos; the latter the rallying-cry of those who would overcome it. But is authenticity really such a ‘crazy’ notion? Is the century-long European involvement with it merely an obsession with a vague Romantic ideal?Has it nothing important and relevant to teach us? This book attempts to provide someanswers, or at least call into question the view that authenticity is a ‘crazy’ notion best set aside by responsible philosophers. If authenticity is madness, we should all be a littlecrazy in order to become what we cherish most: our own true selves.

There is no difficulty in understanding the terms ‘authentic’ and ‘authenticity’ as they are used in everyday language. Those unsure as to their precise meanings can consult anydictionary. In the OED, for example, ‘authentic’ is denned as something ‘first-hand, original as opposed to copied’, something ‘real, actual, genuine as opposed to imaginary, pretended’. Examples usually refer to genuine documents and works of art ‘as opposed to counterfeit [items]’ or those of disputed origin.

Indeed, with regard to works of art, documents and archaeological finds, this is the principal use of the term. It presupposes the existence of a genuine and original product,to be contrasted with potential copies and forgeries. But is it wise to adopt a model fromart and apply it to human life and human selves? Who is the legitimate prototype, theparadigm of authenticity? The eighteenth-century poet Edward Young provided one paradoxical answer: ‘Born originals, how comes it to pass that we die copies?’ Yet surely babies are hardly models of authenticity. The philosophical understanding of‘authenticity’ is far more complex than its everyday use suggests.

Notes

1 Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. W.Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1941), pp. 41, 49, 50–1, 64.

2 “Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. W Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1954), pp. 121–2, 132, 310–11, 399.

3 J.-P.Sartre, The Age of Reason, trans. E.Sutton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), pp. 242–3. 4 As cited in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, ed. R.D.Cummings (New York: Vintage,

1965), p. 240. 5 Albert Camus, The Outsider, trans. S.Gilbert (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), pp. 64, 102–

3, 114, 116, 120. 6 Ibid., p. 97.

1 Authenticity, sincerity and

honesty

The term ‘authenticity’ is used in so many different contexts that it may very well resist definition. Yet the most significant difficulty that arises in attempting to define it lies inthe philosophical nature of its meaning. Even to speak of ‘the nature of its meaning’ is misleading, since it implies a kind of essentialism, a perspective of objectivity which isforeign to authenticity. As Sartre pointed out, authenticity does not denote ‘objective qualities’ such as those associated with the notions of sincerity and honesty, qualities onepredicates of ‘the person’ in the same way one asserts, for instance, that ‘the table is round or square’.1 The notion of authenticity, it seems, signifies something beyond thedomain of objective language, while the notions of sincerity and honesty have to do withattributes to which language can refer directly.

This feeling is strengthened by reading Being and Nothingness, where Sartre describes ‘human reality’ as ‘being which is what it is not and which is not what it is’.2 This idea, and his insistence that authenticity is something we are aware of when ‘we flee it’3

suggest that authenticity is a negative term. Its presence is discerned in its absence, in thepassionate search for it, in inauthenticity and in various acts of ‘bad faith’ (mauvaise foi). The latter are described far more extensively in Sartre’s writings than are the authentic modes.

The works of other existentialist writers manifest a similar disproportion between those that directly address authenticity itself and those that critique societal values andinauthentic modes of living. Nietzsche, for example, devotes relatively little space todescribing his ideal Übermensch and never points to a concrete historical figure whoexemplifies it. The same is true of Kierkegaard and Camus. All agree in principle thatany positive definition of authenticity would be self-nullifying.

The existentialist writers hope to shatter our dogmatic beliefs and lure us into giving up blindly accepted ethical norms and ideologies. Only when we successfully shed thesevalues that we have been conditioned to uphold by various institutions—our families, schools and universities—will we be able to reach beyond them to the genuine roots ofour selves and ultimately attain authenticity. The unnecessary information we havecollected during our lifetimes, the ‘facts’ postulated as an integral part of the ethos ofobjectivity fostered by society and its institutions, are inapplicable to the sphere of humanexistence in which one struggles for one’s self. There, in their stead, the notion ofauthenticity emerges.

IN SEARCH OF AUTHENTICITY: From Kierkegaard to Camus 1

The indirect approach to understanding the notion of authenticity, akin to the theological via negativa, is also reflected in the OED, where the term ‘authentic’ is defined largely by its antonyms. Given this elusive nature, we may be better offapproaching the notion of authenticity by attempting to distinguish it from the kindredterms of sincerity and honesty.

I

In Sincerity and Authenticity, Lionel Trilling defines sincerity as ‘the state or quality of the self which refers primarily to a congruence between avowal and actual feeling’. He goes on to claim that one of the main criteria of sincerity is ‘the degree of correspondence between the principle avowed by a society and its actual conduct’.4 Thus for Trilling the term ‘sincerity’ is used for the self as manifested in the social domain. Sincerity can be objectively tested—for example, by checking whether outward behaviour is consistent with public declarations. ‘Sincere’ in this sense is synonymous with ‘true’ and ‘honest’. All three of these concepts are foreign to the idea of authentic life as understood by theexistentialist writers. For them, the notion of authenticity expresses, among other things,revolt against the traditional conception of truth and the ideal of sincerity derived fromit.5 Authenticity resides neither in the external correspondence of sentences to what they refer to, nor in the internal coherence of various statements. This, in fact, is the heart ofthe existentialist revolution: the eclipse of ‘truth’ by ‘truthfulness’, the transition from objective sincerity to personal authenticity.

The terms ‘sincerity’ and ‘honesty’ are applicable to an individual whose inner convictions and commitments are congruent with that individual’s behaviour. As such, they differ from ‘authenticity’, which cannot be said to apply to any suchcorrespondence, since correspondence presumes a static subject, while authenticityrequires an incessant movement of becoming, self-transcendence and self-creation. It calls for no particular contents or consequences but, rather, focuses on the origins and theintensity of one’s emotional—existential commitments, on what Kierkegaard calls‘subjective inwardness’ and Sartre ‘engagement’.

However, the existentialists’ reservations about sincerity and honesty are in no way similar to Hegel’s6 and stem from different considerations. In Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel criticizes the ‘honest individual’. The notions of honesty and sincerity in a givenhistorical period, he argues, exemplify submission to the prevailing morality and nullifythe urge of the Spirit to escape the conditions which circumscribe it and to assume anexistence of complete freedom determined by itself alone. Since the Spirit is alwaysundergoing the dialectical movement of unfolding itself in history, there is an inherenttension between the agent, as the vehicle of this development, and ‘the honest individual’ who ‘takes each moment to be an abiding essentiality’7 and derives his or her identity from the prevailing Sittlichkeit—the ethos based on current social, legal and culturalinstitutions. The rational essence of any individual, according to Hegel, can be adequatelyactualized only within the framework of a state organized so that its citizens and its social

Authenticity, sincerity and honesty 2

and cultural institutions coexist harmoniously. Since such a state is as yet just anunactualized idea in the practical realm of Spirit, those who conform to society byinternalizing the prevailing ethic are actually subjecting themselves to a frameworkdevoid of comprehensive rationality. And since social conformity is inconsistent withdisbelief in the rationality and moral validity of society, such ‘honest individuals’ suffer from self-alienation, a state characterized by double standards and conflicting norms.

On Hegel’s analysis, the ‘honest individual’ is actually a hypocrite lacking real freedom. For Hegel, the absolute rationality which will be fully realized with the end ofhistory will bring with it total freedom, but this freedom is far removed from that aspiredto by the thinkers on authenticity. For them, freedom consists in negating the currentethic, in overcoming the demands of one’s personal history by not denning oneself according to present or future historical predicaments. Rejec-tion of the ethos of ‘the honest individual’ makes way for the pathos of authenticity.

Authenticity and sincerity are thus fundamentally opposed and should not be regardedas equivalent or synonymous.8 Trilling maintains that authenticity is ‘a more strenuous moral experience than “sincerity”, a more exigent conception of the self and of what being true to it consists in, a wider reference to the universe and man’s place in it, and a less acceptant and genial view of the social circumstances of life’. The distinction, however, is not merely a quantitative one. As Trilling notes, ‘much that culture traditionally condemned and sought to exclude is accorded a considerable moral authorityby reason of the authenticity claimed for it, e.g., disorder, violence, unreason’.9 But authenticity is not a ‘moral authority’, for it is contrary to the nature of authenticity to tellothers what to do. Though the term is indeed derived from auctoritas, the authority in question is self-directed—it is the mastery of one who freely creates the pathos ofauthenticity and strives to express and live it in the everyday.

II

David Hume is one of those who use the term ‘authenticity’ in the sense of genuineness, of things being what they profess in origin or authorship.10 But Hume did not apply this notion to the concept of the self, arguing that the term ‘self’ is a meaningless metaphysical obfuscation denoting an allegedly permanent entity that is in fact no morethan a bundle of impressions and ideas to which we mistakenly ascribe an identity.

In reaction to Hume, certain German philosophers sought to restore the metaphysical validity of the self. Kant introduces the ‘transcendental Ego’ to shift the focus away from the individual or ‘empirical Ego’. He transfers God’s creative functions to human beings, who, as transcendental Egos, create the whole knowable world, including their empiricalEgos, around themselves. This move cleared the way for the self-creation of one’s selfhood—for authenticity. Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus soon follow with their claims ofthe death of God and their demands that all individuals adopt for themselves the God-like role of being the originator of their own selves. As the theory of the ‘preestablished harmony’ between our thoughts and reality, guaranteed by God, fell into disfavour, that


of the self-creation of the self gained popularity. The proponents of authenticity took the opportunity to have us become God.

Like Kant’s transcendental Ego, the notion of authenticity is formal: it too focuses on the origin of creativity and spontaneity, on ‘how’ rather than ‘what’. It is also formal in the sense of the categorical imperative. No less than the Kantian conception of themorally autonomous human agent, the concept of authenticity is a protest against theblind, mechanical acceptance of an externally imposed code of values. The existentialistthinkers’ preoccupation with origin and genealogy, then, is largely a product of theKantian outlook. Yet the Kantian perspective evokes a kind of ‘transcendental pretence’.11 The transcendental Ego, construed as supra-personal, leads ultimately to a destructive collapse of all individual selves into an abstract universal Self.12 The existentialist revolt should thus be seen as an attempt to counteract this tendency, to callus back to our all-too-human but none the less authentic sense of self.

The concept of ‘self’ denotes that which one intrinsically is. However, this being, according to thinkers on authenticity, is not a fixed entity or abstract essence, but anexistence that precedes any essence and determination. Thus, existentialism rejects thetraditional ontological notion of the subject, the grandiose metaphysical idea of theAbsolute or Universal Self. Hume himself encouraged this rejection by fostering aprofound confidence in human emotions. In contradistinction to Kant’s rational ethics and unqualified faith in reason, Hume argued: ‘Reason is and ought to be the slave of thepassions’,13 thereby strengthening the claim of pathos to be a legitimate constitutive element of the self.

Further, Hume’s notion of the self as a ‘bundle of impressions’ conceived of the individual as chaotic raw material which one’s creativity could organize and mould without any ontological constraints. The Humean individual lacks the ontological rigidityand fixedness of an a priori essence and is therefore more amenable to self-creation, providing one is in control of these impressions. Once ordered, they become a set ofexpressions which transform the self into an aggregate of sentiments and life-pathos, of ‘true pathos of every period of our life’.14 This conception of pathos as an experience,feeling or sentiment of a particular individual, as a sensual feeling of one’s own authentic self in its emotional richness, requires no definite ontological status or metaphysicalaggrandizement.

The Continental existentialists’ revolt against Western metaphysics, however, does not deny its history. To invert values, to revise, one must have a good command of theoriginal versions and dogmas against which one is reacting. The thinkers of authenticity,though seeking to replace conventional concepts of truth, retain certain traditional motifs.Thus, for example, when Sartre succumbs to the temptation to define authenticity despitethe essential impossibility of such a definition, he is simply regressing to the traditionalconcept of truth as correspondence:

Authenticity consists in having a true and lucid consciousness of the situation, in assuming the responsibilities and risks that it involves, in accepting it in pride or humiliation, sometimes in horror and hate.15

Another example is the ideal of coherence, which reappears as a whole, congruent and


harmonious personality in the existentialist quest for individuum, which rejects any symptom of dividuum within one’s authentic self. They thus oppose those components ofthe prevailing social ethos that, when internalized, prevent one from attaining this idealinner harmony and simplicity.

III

The notions of honesty and sincerity can be defined as congruence between one’s inclinations and the prevailing ethos, or as congruence between one’s behaviour and one’s innermost essence.16 Authenticity, however, is not in keeping with such a definition. Not only does it deny any rigid a priori essence, but it also rejects any intrinsicvalue in compliance with a given set of standards. It regards any such compliance asflight from one’s responsibility for freely forming one’s selfhood. Authenticity defines itself as lacking any definition. It is a pathos of incessant change, as opposed to a passivesubordination to one particular ethic.

This explains why the rise of philosophies of authenticity took place during a period when the prevailing ethos was a target of scepticism and ceased to function as anunchallenged authority. The birth of authenticity is rooted in revolution, or at least in thetransfiguration of all prevailing social values and institutions, including those of Judaeo-Christian culture. Congruence—the essence of sincerity—is not viable at such a time. One is left to one’s own devices, to one’s lonely self, and this selfhood must suffice to provide everything previously supplied by various cultural and social institutions. One isnow obliged to create values and patterns of behaviour from one’s own mental resources. Here I am not just speaking of the disruption of a given ethos and the disintegration ofsociety and authority, but of something far more traumatic: the death of the highestsanction and the absolute guarantee of our values—the death of God. The almost universal belief in God, which has in the West for two millennia sustained a singledominant ethic with minor variations, is now badly shaken. It is a time when, inNietzsche’s words, one ‘would sooner have the void for his purpose than be void of purpose’. This vacuum, where humanity is left without any ‘pillars of fire’ to guide its way, is the cultural and intellectual background for the emergence of the search forauthenticity.

The failure of congruence is a condition for the emergence of authenticity in another sense as well. Ethical ‘oughts’ are never fully actualized: there is always a gap between the declared ideals and values of a society and its actual conduct. The question is how torespond to this unbridgeable gap between theory and practice? Several responses arepossible. There is the response of the honest individual who, despite his awareness of thisgap, complacently conforms to the ‘ought’ of the prevalent ethic. There is the opportunistic reaction of conforming to the ‘is’, and the nihilistic rejection of both ‘ought’ and ‘is’ hinted at in Nietzsche’s above-quoted statement. There is the Romantic search for another ‘ought’ and, finally, the authentic response of being true to the projectof forming one’s own self, which entails reluctance to conform to any external ‘is’ or


‘ought’ or to seek some transcendental ‘ought’. To heighten the differences between authenticity, honesty and opportunism I want to

have a brief look at the hero of Denis Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew, a literary figure wrongly regarded by some, under the influence of Hegel, as exemplifying authenticity.Moreover, though I said that a climate of revolution is most conducive to the emergenceof the cry for authenticity, not all historical revolutions did give rise to this ideal. TheFrench Revolution is a case in point.

IV

Written in 1762, Rameau’s Nephew is a bitter satire in which Diderot describes an imaginary dialogue between two characters. The first is Diderot himself, depicted as anhonest soul who believes in bourgeois virtues: ‘we ought all to behave like decentpeople…fill a position in society and carry out its duties’.17 The second is a fictional nephew of the French composer Rameau. They discuss, among other things, thedilemmas of an immoral society, in which sincerity is not necessarily the best policy, andhonesty is not thought worthy of respect.

In contrast to the honest philosopher, who sticks to certain humanistic values like ‘the good, the true, the beautiful’, Diderot presents the bohemian ‘parasite and buffoon’ who, aware of society’s deceitfulness and hypocrisy, adopts an opportunistic attitude. Thedecent philosopher is ‘completely bewildered by this alliance of so much cleverness andso much baseness, by this torrent of alternately true and false ideas, by such a totalperversion of right feeling, by such utter turpitude and so rare a candour’ (p. 125). However, he is strongly attracted to this ‘eccentric’ character, who ‘provides such a contrast to the normal run of people’, because he makes ‘a change from the tedious uniformity that our upbringing, our social conventions and our habitual propriety haveimposed on us’, and because he ‘brings out the truth; he makes you see who the decentpeople are; he unmasks the rogues’ (p. 115).

This outsider ‘unmasks’ the double standards of bourgeois society and sets out to live in accordance with its operative norms, as expressed in such maxims as ‘Gold is everything’ and ‘you can’t dishonour yourself if you’re rich, whatever you do’ (p. 134). Rameau’s nephew turns these implicit norms into explicit rules of everyday conduct, andproclaims:

It would be very eccentric and stupid of me if I refused to conform. Oh, I know perfectly well that if you go and apply certain general principles to these things, dragged in from this morality they all talk about and never practise, well of course everything that’s black turns out to be white and everything white becomes black.

(p. 130)

This candid beggar unmasks the comedy of a social order which has lost all moral


validity and legitimacy in the daily lives of people who ‘are all extremely honest…yet there is not one of them whose conduct does not depart in some particulars from thegeneral principles of morality and is not full of moral idioms’ (ibid.). By this candour, this courageous exposure of what society does but never speaks of, Rameau’s nephew acquires uprightness and dignity. Proud of his intel-lectual integrity, he is aware that by unmasking hypocrisy and corruption he can escape it. His consciousness, in Hegel’s words, ‘derides existence and the universal confusion, and derides its own self as well’,18

yet in this world of pretence, the one who is not pretending—Rameau’s nephew—is the genuine ‘honest individual’. By pointing to the negative and calling black things ‘black’, he is acting positively, and hence is more deserving of our esteem than Diderot thephilosophe, with his obsolete ethic of honesty which affords unambiguous self-definition but only within an existential void. Rameau’s nephew has no definite self to be true to,but only a disintegrated and confused consciousness; yet he represents the sincereindividual who is ‘not a hypocrite’, and therefore commands respect: ‘He was merely being more honest, more willing to face facts, and occasionally profound in hisdepravity’ (p. 139). Hegel concurs, describing the ‘disrupted consciousness’ as manifesting ‘the greatest truth’.19 Rameau’s nephew has a disintegrated self because he has consciously internalized society’s double standard—the disparity between the practical ‘is’ and the theoretical ‘ought’—but feels alienated from this divided ethic,whose division is its ‘greatest truth’. We have to ask ourselves, however, whether the opportunistic and estranged character of Rameau’s nephew exemplifies authenticity.

The opportunism of Rameau’s nephew lies in the fact that he reacts to the double standards by adopting the prevailing ‘is’ as his declared ‘ought’ and living accordingly. In so doing he is merely responding to circumstances and is thus no less dependent uponthem than the ‘honest individual’ who tries to live according to the public ethos. He even attempts to find his place ‘among wealthy robbers’ (p. 137) and conforms to their unwritten standards by deliberately manipulating the gap between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ to his own advantage. This conformity engenders a degree of coherence since it minimizes theconflict between one’s inner convictions and the public ethic.

Thus if honesty indeed consists in correspondence to a prevailing ethic, Diderot is right to judge Rameau’s nephew as ‘more honest’ than his seemingly upright contemporaries. But he is not yet an authentic hero, for the authentic hero is active rather than reactive,wielding, as we shall see in the next chapter, constructive and creative irony rather thandestructive and opportunistic cynicism.

Notes

1 J.-P Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. H.E.Barnes (London: Methuen, 1957), p. 55. Sartrewould regard the attempt to construe authenticity as an objective quality as a clear exampleof ‘the spirit of seriousness’ and ‘bad faith’.

2 Ibid., p. 58. 3 From Sartre’s preface to N.Sarraute, Portrait of a Man Unknown, trans. Maria Jolas (New


York: George Braziller, 1958). 4 Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 2,

27. 5 Before this revolt in Western philosophy, there was a tendency to confuse authenticity with

sincerity:

Later writers, however, imply that authenticity at times may encompass insincerebehaviour, lies and dishonesty—witness Mathieu’s relations with his girlfriend Marcelle in Sartre’s The Age of Reason after she tells him of her pregnancy.

This above all—to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

(Hamlet, II.iii.77–9)

6 As Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, believes. 7 G.W.F.Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V.Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979),

p. 317. 8 R.G.Olson, e.g., fails to distinguish between Sartre’s notion of inauthenticity and the concept

of insincerity, in his ‘Sincerity and the moral life’, Ethics, 68 (1957/8), pp. 260–80. He disregards Sartre’s assertion in Being and Nothingness (p. 63) that ‘sincerity’ is ‘precisely a phenomenon of bad faith’ and as such cannot be identical with authenticity.

9 Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, p. 10. 10 ‘I am not surprised to find…that Mr.Gray should have entertained suspicions with regard to

the authenticity of these fragments of our Highland poetry’, The Letters of David Hume, ed. J.Y.T.Greig (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), p. 328 (letter 176, dated 16 August 1760).

11 Cf. R.C.Solomon, Continental Philosophy since 1750 (London: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 1–15.

12 Thus, e.g., against Fichte’s world-encompassing Self, Heine remarked: ‘Himself as everything! How does Mrs. Fichte put up with it?!’, Religion and Philosophy in Germany, trans. J.Snodgrass (London: K.Paul, Trench and Trübner, 1981) p. 137.

13 A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford University Press, 1951), p. 451. 14 Nietzsche, The Gay Science, para. 317; and cf. its poetic definition in the introduction to

Sarraute’s L’Etre du soupon: Essais sur le roman (Paris: Gallimard, 1956). 15 Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. G.J.Becker (New York: Schocken, 1965), p. 90. 16 Cf. D.Wood, ‘Honesty’, in Philosophy and Personal Relations, ed. A. Montefiore (London:

Routledge, 1973), pp. 191–223. 17 Diderot’s Selected Writings, ed. L.G.Crocker, trans. D.Coltman (London: Collier-Macmillan,

1966), pp. 136, 134. 18 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 319. 19 Ibid., p. 317.


2 Authenticity, literature and

irony

Arguing for authenticity is self-defeating in that it presupposes the authority of rationality and objectivity, which is called into question by this ideal. Since one cannot arguerationally for adopting authentic life, one must be satisfied with the subtle enticement ofthe reader. But how can someone be enticed into authenticity? Through descriptions ofauthentic lives? But how can an authentic subject or self be depicted? Indeed, thetraditional ontological meanings of ‘subject’ and ‘self’ must themselves be rejected. And how is one to identify authentic patterns of living without appealing to normativecriteria? Part of the solution lies in the use of literature as a medium for indirectlycommunicating about authenticity. Various literary styles are exploited to this didacticend, notably irony.

Almost half the writing of the most influential philosophers of authenticity take someform other than straight exposition. Even Heidegger, who did not write any literaryfiction, made use of a variety of different literary genres, such as the lecture, the essay,the dialogue and poetry. Other proponents of authenticity experimented with such literarystyles as short stories, novels, plays, poems, aphoristic essays, fictitious diaries,biographies and even autobiographies.

This is by no means a coincidence. Nor does it originate solely in the existentialists’ dislike of systematic philosophy or disbelief in its ‘scientific’ status. It is true that Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and Camus constantly changed their styles inan attempt to avoid any appearance of building a system. Most would endorseNietzsche’s confession: ‘I mistrust all systematizers and I avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity’.1 It is also, one might add, a betrayal of personalauthenticity, which eschews the protective ethos of objectivity. However, there arefurther and more profound reasons for the variety of literary forms used to promoteauthenticity. These reasons can be divided into two main groups: some have to do withthe problems arising from the very attempt to explicate the notion of authenticity, whileothers have to do with the desire to achieve certain effects by writing indirectly.

I


The principal aim of writers on authenticity was to evoke in their readers the pathos ofauthenticity. They hoped to restore a personal mental power and sense of selfhood thatmodernity had diminished. Since they could not argue, they had to be satisfied withportraying the sublime and heroic patterns of authentic life. These portraits are intendedto provoke us into creating genuine selves. Since, in matters of authenticity, the ‘how’ is more crucial than the ‘what’, literature is particularly helpful in engaging the reader’s attention and provoking her to action, since it tempts the reader to follow the path ofauthenticity without making this aim explicit, and, more importantly, without definingauthenticity.

The variety of literary styles that can be utilized indicates that there is no one exclusive and definitive path to authenticity—to be authentic means to invent one’s own way and pattern of life. Here the concept of originality does not refer so much to the idea of originas to undogmatic openness—or, to use Nietzsche’s terminology, a ‘horizon of infinite perspectives’ from which the individual can survey his or her own life and mould it accordingly. Open-ended experiments with possible world-perspectives and literary styles are intended to serve as a firsthand example. The construction of possible worlds(and this does not refer solely to science fiction) frees literature, especially that of thenarrative variety, from strictly realistic or referential constraints. This freedom allows forexperimentation with notions, such as that of authenticity, that go beyond theconventional dichotomies of true/false, sincere/insincere, honest/dishonest, good/evil. Iteven permits, as the case of Heidegger shows, the coinage of new expressions and usageswhich undermine rigidly traditional modes of living and thinking. Only literature canproduce and diffuse new senses so effectively. The literary pluralism of the writers ofauthenticity is, among other things, a solution to the problem of enticement via theperlocutionary effects of speech acts without relapsing into limited ontological andepistemo-logical paradigms of communication. The existential predicaments and the pathos of authenticity that cannot be propositionally expressed still leave room forindirect communication: not of a ‘what’ but of a ‘how’. By varying styles and rhetoric, we are invited to embrace authenticity, though not any particular content, for authenticexpressions of self are in principle indefinite and infinite. Moreover, the writers ofauthenticity change their genres and styles to stress the fact that certain kinds of pathosoriginate within themselves. The variety of their styles is yet another expression of the revolt against the tradition of impersonal and detached objectivity, a constant reminderthat we are reading their writings, the personal products of their own values and goals.

II

One can portray authentic forms of life, but one cannot justify them rationally. This isespecially true of narrative fiction, where the texts do not assert the existence ofauthenticity but, rather, presuppose and reproduce it. Corresponding to these indirectmeans of communication are parallel means of undermining the literary portraits ofauthenticity. How does one refute or object to that which was never directly asserted or

Authenticity, literature and irony 10

argued for? By the very means employed to introduce it—literature and irony. An illuminating example is John Barth’s parody of Sartre’s notion of authenticity, in which Barth uses narrative fiction, irony and satire to provoke us into rejecting the whole idealas sheer nonsense. In particular, he juxtaposes caricatures of ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic’ characters, so grotesquely misrepresenting each mode that both are reduced to absurdity.2

In any case, the reader must rely solely on the narrator’s descriptions in deciding whether or not the characters are authentic. Here lies another reason for the wide use ofliterature in dealing with authentic life; this has less to do with the intention to allure thereader and more with the external observer’s inability to judge whether acts are genuineexpressions of authenticity. As a writer of literary fiction, the philosopher is omnipresentand omniscient like the creating God. Through such writing, the reader can, as it were,enter the characters’ innermost selves: the reader can participate in their intimate intentions, share their feelings and think their thoughts. Since authenticity and its variouskinds of pathos belong, in principle, to the private domain of the individual, who alonecan experience them, others can judge her only by some sort of ‘privileged’ access to her consciousness. Such privileged access can be gained through the creation of ‘transparent’ fictional characters.3

This accounts for the fact that many of the works in question use first-person narration and the present tense. Notable examples are Sartre’s Nausea and Camus’s The Outsider. Another example, Nietzsche’s On the Future of Our Cultural Institutions, is less familiar. An exercise in story-telling, it uses first-person narrative technique at two levels: at one level, Nietzsche addresses an audience at the University of Basel; at another, Nietzsche isa high-school student describing events and conversations from his youth.

What is often referred to in literary theory as the author’s point of view, namely, the specific mode in which the author or narrator presents the fictional world, is useful indiscussing literary works on authenticity. The more information the author disclosesabout private events, such as his characters’ feelings and thoughts, the more the author asserts himself as the omnipotent controller of the narration. Where the knower is also thecreator, to know all is to be responsible for everything. To accept such responsibility without excuses, as creators should do, is to be authentic. This sense of responsibility isconveyed to us by the deliberate choice, on the part of the author, of the most intimatepoint of view. This is vividly expressed in attempts to write ‘autobiographical’ accounts of the search for true self. Thus, for example, the pivotal claim of Sartre’s celebrated autobiography is ‘Je n’avais pas de verité’; his story reveals his personal difficulties inattaining authenticity and living up to his ‘verité solitaire’.4 This gives him the credibility to urge us to keep trying ourselves.

Becoming what one is involves an incessant yet indefinite process which cannot beunivocally characterized. It is an ever-present happening without any causallydetermining past or rationally defined future. The literature attempts to capture thisprocess, as, for example, when the diary novels of Kierkegaard’s ‘Seducer’ or Sartre’s Roquentin or Camus’s heroes provide us with this ever-presentness of the spontaneously lived life whose only passionate commitment is to the formation of its own uniqueauthenticity. To write about this a-rational enterprise in a systematic manner—say, by using logic and the traditional expository style—would be self-defeating.

The problems associated with the evaluation of the authenticity of others also account


for the interest in the biographies of literary or historical/intellectual figures. Nietzsche’s ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’ and Sartre’s numerous biographies are intended, amongother things, to assess the authenticity of these figures, our knowledge of whom came tous in the form of secondhand information: theoretical or literary studies, ‘common-knowledge’ facts about their lives, their own diaries, etc. All these attempts at evaluation end in a kind of Socratic aporia: no definite verdict can be reached. The futility of these biographical ventures motivated Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre and others to concentrateon fictional characters of authenticity, such as Abraham, the knight of faith, Zarathustra,etc. Only within the realm of fiction can we gain access to the elusive realm of the pathosof authenticity.

III

Narrative fiction is ‘the narration of a succession of fictional events’.5 The narrator can be inside the story as one of the characters, as in Camus’s The Outsider, or outside it as anonymous observer, like Sartre in his trilogy. Narratives, and for that matter plays (e.g.those of Camus and Sartre), have plots made up of strings of actions, and hence aresuitable for presenting the extreme situations Jaspers referred to as Grenzsituationen(boundary or limit situations).6 Since authentic life is impossible without significantactions, literary forms that focus on actions are the best media for presenting authenticlife. The extreme situations and events so abundant in this literature also serve as amagnifying lens through which it is easier to see the almost invisible details ofauthenticity and its inner pathos.

Yet even assuming that fiction can portray extreme situations, the following questionremains: why are the philosophers of authenticity so eager to resort to literarydescriptions of these events? Indeed, they are frequently accused by critics of dealingwith situations which most of us would never experience. Consider Kierkegaard onAbraham’s attempt to sacrifice his son Isaac, or his account of the uncommon seductionof an innocent girl by the sophistic ‘Seducer’ in Either/Or; Nietzsche’s portrait of Zarathustra’s esoteric modes of living, and his insistence on the existential import of sickness, under the slogan ‘What does not destroy me makes me stronger’; the existential nausea and anxieties of freedom and war suffered by Sartre’s literary heroes; and the experiences of Meursault in Camus’s The Outsider and of Dr Rieux in The Plague. What accounts for this almost obsessive preoccupation with, and glorification of, extremesituations?

A clue is provided by Joseph Conrad, who specialized in the presentation of extremesituations, and used his works to explore the following question: ‘Can you pull your authentic self together when you lose all support? Will you survive or go under?’ In a paradigmatic literary expression of contemporary interest in authenticity, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902) sets out the challenge starkly:

Mr Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts…. But the


wilderness had found him out early, and…had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude—and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.7

Unlike Rousseau, Conrad viewed the wilderness not as the biological paradigm ofauthentic life but, rather, as the perfect chance to test for its existence. In Heart ofDarkness, the jungle provides the opportunity for the novel’s characters to experienceextreme situations to which conventional Western values are inapplicable. Theindividual’s behaviour in such an ethical ‘darkness’ illuminates his innermost self: hemay be swept away by the bestiality and inhumanity of the jungle and turn into abloodthirsty monster like Kurtz; or he may, like Marlow, stand fast against the terribletemptation to succumb to the jungle. Marlow’s humanistic values do not disappear in thisexistential purgatory and he manages to leave the jungle with authenticated honesty.

At the outset, the ethic of honesty and sincerity is an externally imposed constraint.One is born to it and formed by the conditioning mechanisms of its educationalinstitutions. Success in conforming to the letter of this ethos is amply rewarded. But theoutward or behavioural honesty of those who are successful, and their verbal sincerity,tell us nothing about their authenticity. How can we know that behind compliance withthat ethic lies an authentically honest and sincere person?

We are unable to answer this question, not only with reference to others, but also withrespect to ourselves. Introspection into the inner layers of one’s self is of no avail, since,as Nietzsche warns us, the individual is ‘a thing dark and veiled; and if the hare has sevenskins, man can slough off seventy times seven and still not be able to say: “this is reallyyou, this is no longer outer shell”’.8 Here Nietzsche identifies an acute problem that arisesboth from the lack of objective criteria for authenticity and from the psychological make-up of those who attempt to make such judgements. How can one reach the inner core ofthe self or become conscious of its ‘hollowness’ if it is covered by so many defensivelayers, especially if the one who is searching and the self being searched are one and thesame? Nietzsche, Sartre and others reject the viability of the Delphic injunction ‘Knowthyself’. Not because, like Nietzsche (who anticipated Freud in this respect), theybelieved in an unconscious mental life, but because, notwithstanding their belief in thetransparency of our consciousness, they perceived the individual as homo ludens, asplaying at being a particular artificial self. On this existentialist perception, one tends tomask one’s own genuine self with different masks (personae) and to play various rolesand personalities until the mask and one’s self become inseparable. Hence thephilosophers of authenticity used indirect means of testing authenticity—particularly,literary descriptions of extreme situations.

In these situations one can no longer be governed by internalized norms. Without thisethical safety net, one is wholly responsible, and thus free to invent oneself. Without thisfreedom and personal responsibility—thrown into sharp relief by the dramaticpresentation of extreme situations—authenticity cannot be attained. Under the stress ofthese circumstances, one’s behaviour reveals the inner genuine self behind the masks anddisguises that no longer function. One must find one’s way without recourse to theguiding systems of social institutions. By acting in circumstances that are beyond the


‘good and honest’ ethic, the world of shallow appearances and pious ethical codes—namely, in the real jungle and in traumatic moments of personal truth—we can arrive at some conclusion as to whether genuine selfhood or a hollow core lies behind one’s cultural shell. In Heart of Darkness, for example, Conrad shows Kurtz’s ethic of honesty crumbling, while Marlow’s, which is more than a conditioned semblance and ‘outer shell’, remains firm.

Another assumption underlying the extensive use of extreme situations is expressed bySartre’s slogan: ‘Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself…he is the sum of his actions’.9 There is no vague, elusive emotion called ‘love’, there are only concrete deeds and acts of love. The same applies to any other feeling. How can we judge theexistence or sincerity of feelings if not by way of judging acts? We can know about ourlove by examining how our acts express this love. In the context of our everydayhumdrum lives, it is hard to know what we feel genuinely and what we really are, sincemost of our acts are expressions and consequences of conditioning, imitation and convenient conformity. But in the crucial moments that require definite and significantdecisions and action, we are more capable of discerning who we genuinely are. There isno one but ourselves to condemn or appreciate our behaviour. There was nobody left inthe hopeless situation of The Plague to reward Dr Rieux for the brave humanitarian services he rendered to the victims; nevertheless, he rendered them to the end. This,perhaps, explains the existentialists’, notably Heidegger’s, intense interest in death. Our deaths and, especially, our ways of dying are touchstones for our authenticity. For manyof us, death is the most individual, genuinely true—and surely the only radical—action performed in our entire lives. Thus, for example, an atheist’s death without rites in a Christian society is revealing, since he is not acting for the sake of adjustment or reward.We cannot but admire Meursault’s consistency in rejecting the chaplain’s insistence that he confess and thereby be ‘absolved’ of his ‘sin’. His response seems authentic:

I didn’t believe in God…. I wasn’t conscious of any ‘sin’; all I knew was that I’d been guilty of a criminal offence. Well, I was paying the penalty of that offence, and no one had the right to expect anything more of me.10

Extreme situations reveal that accepted social values often conflict. We are unwilling totake up these contradictions directly, and prefer to ignore them. Only if it becomesnecessary do we beat around the bush in an attempt to straighten things out, usuallyarriving at an artificial compromise. We constantly avert our eyes from the dilemmas ofour working values, and avoid definite engagements one way or the other. These conflictscome to the surface when an existential emergency calls for immediate action.

We create our authenticity; it is not delivered to us by higher authorities. As humanbeings, however, we are often morally compromised by escaping our responsibility forourselves. To block off certain avenues of escape and bring about fundamental changes inour lives, the philosophers of authenticity use fictional portraits and dramatic descriptionsof extreme situations that make us realize how, even in everyday situations, it is up to usto create our own selves.

The link between the form and the content of literary-philosophical writings on authenticity is significant. In fact, here the medium is a substantial part of the message. In


writing, an author is taking action; indeed writing is an attempt to crystallize andarticulate the authenticity of its creator. Thus the fictional worlds portrayed, in whichdifferent types of heroes are immersed in the search for their genuine selves, actuallyrepresent the real, existential predicaments of these authors, who, in confronting theseissues, are trying to become authentic themselves. This will be particularly clear inKierkegaard’s case. The link between the thematic and rhetorical qualities of these works and their authors’ existential projects heightens the reader’s sense of authenticity and enhances the perlocutionary import of these works. Authenticity is a subjective pathos,requiring subjective and privileged access; this access is best obtained from theperspective of the personal dramas, agonies and doubts reflected in these writings.

IV

Because of its intimate relationship with the notion of authenticity, the most powerful andwidely used literary means of enticing the reader is irony. One might even claim that thewritings of the philosophers of authenticity are essentially ironic, since much of theirapparent content is incommensurable with the underlying motive for their creation—to lure the reader towards a different life.11 But how exactly does irony function as a royalpath to authenticity? What accounts for its effectiveness?

There is little agreement among critics as to what irony is; some even claim that ‘its very spirit and value are violated by the effort to be clear about it’.12 Having devoted much effort to avoiding a definition of authenticity, it will now be useful for me to do thesame with irony.

I begin with the following description of irony: ‘The art of irony is the art of saying something without really saying it. It is an art that gets its effects from below thesurface…saying much more than it seems to be saying.’13 The ‘effect’ that concerns us here is enticement, which cannot be achieved by direct propositional language. Indirectenticement requires disguise, masking. As critics have noted, irony is often characterizedby the following features: it involves a multi-layered figure of speech; it entails an incongruity between the overt and the implied levels; and the speaker pretends ignoranceof the deeper level.14 In other words, the ironic writer presents a text in such a way thatthe reader or listener is moved to reject the overt, literal meaning and seek an implied contradictory or inexplicable sense. As regards authenticity, the effect of a particular typeof irony is especially important. I refer to the irony that indirectly casts doubt on thevalidity of prevailing values and thereby arrests or lessens the reader’s motivation to continue upholding them. This effect is achieved by the simulated adoption of another’s point of view for the purpose of ridicule, by reducing this point of view to absurdity (asexemplified by Kierkegaard’s treatment of the aesthetic life), or by depicting the psychologically disastrous consequences of clinging to prevailing values (a techniqueused by Nietzsche). This type of irony, implying that no vindication of the values underattack is possible, is helpful in the search for authenticity, which necessarily involvestranscending the prevailing ethos of objectivity in favour of a less-defined openness of


mind, character and identity. Hence Wayne Booth’s description of the writers of ‘unstable irony’ suits our philosophers of authenticity as well. They ‘refuse to declare themselves, however subtly, for any stable proposition, even the opposite of whateverproposition their irony vigorously denies’.15

We should bear in mind, though, that authenticity is not to be confused with nihilism—ultimately, it is an ethic stressing an undogmatic attitude towards other values and beliefsand towards one’s self. ‘Unstable irony’ is used to destabilize our fixed inauthentic selves and pave the way to spontaneity and indeterminacy, for steady progress towardsbecoming what one freely wills. Irony, likewise, does not express nihilistic attitudes, but,rather, stems from genuine beliefs and critical attitudes toward the prevailing values. Itpurports to undermine what is considered worthy of admiration by exposing the absurdityand hypocrisy involved in trying to translate ‘ought’ into a viable social ‘is’. Hence Kierkegaard, who makes the most extensive use of the ironic posture in his attempt toattain authentic faith, claims that ‘irony makes things manifest’.16

One of the main elements of irony, conspicuous in Plato’s Socrates, is a pretence that the ironist is accepting the views of his or her adversary. The ironist seems to adopt theprevailing ethic, but this attitude gradually becomes, to use Hegel’s phrase, ‘scornful laughter’ directed against the values and modes of life held in high esteem by the ironist’s interlocutor before their encounter. Readers spontaneously join in this laughter, unawarethat their own will to uphold prevailing dogmas is thereby arrested.

Another salient feature of irony (also noticeable in Socrates) is the opposition between literal meaning and intended meaning. A dialectical tension exists between the dynamicattraction to the intended meaning and the repulsion engendered by the literal orexpressed meaning. Hence the effectiveness of the ironic posture in the struggle againstthe ethic of sincerity, honesty and honour, the classic example of which is Mark Antony:

The ethos of honesty and sincerity is diametrically opposed to irony. One who upholds itbelieves in what he preaches, whereas the ironist says that which he does not believe, andbelieves that which he does not say. In practice, however, what takes place is somewhatdifferent: the ethic of honesty demands that one comply with prevailing norms, but oftenone’s feelings are not in accord with this ethic. This is especially true of times when the normative fabric is in decline—when authoritative institutions, such as Christianity in Kierkegaard’s and Nietzsche’s age, deteriorate, losing their vital motivating content, withonly the external shell left intact. At these moments, the effectiveness of irony ismanifest. The emptiness of the ethos that has lost its driving force is the perfectbackground for the ironist’s projection of her emerging selfhood.

Irony is the art of unmasking by means of ‘honest’, ‘objective’ convention, namely, everyday language. In the ironic situation, however, language becomes a fifth columnwhich eventually overwhelms the readers, upsetting their illusions of being authentically‘honest’. Irony succeeds because it uses the rhetoric according to which one lives one’s

For Brutus is an honourable man, So are they all, all honourable men.

(Julius Caesar, III.ii.84–5)


life. A frontal attack on the ethos of ‘honesty’, on the other hand, would surely fail, since

‘honest’ individuals would find it difficult to admit, even to themselves, that they are nottruly honest and that their apparent conformity with the letter of their ethos is notmotivated by a genuine commitment to its spirit. Irony uncovers the shallowness andsuperficiality of this ethic indirectly, avoiding direct confrontation with the external shellprotecting the void. A direct assault would only provoke a defensive response, makingreal change even less likely.

Though the ironic idiom apparently uses the objective language of the prevailing ethos, the essence of irony is the indirect but intentional persuasion to transcend that framework.The ironic technique of enticement uses the language of the reader to take the readerbeyond the ethos from which this language derives its meaning.

This explains why irony is so rarely used by the ‘sincere’ educator. Sincerity and honesty preclude any disparity between the external and the internal. Irony, by its verynature, especially when the ethos of honesty is in decline, implies that there is nocorrespondence between external and internal. Yet though it affirms the distinctionbetween the two, it confounds the appearance/essence dichotomy and creates confusionas to which is which. Authenticity emerges from this challenge to long-accepted metaphysical distinctions. Irony teaches us to suspend belief in the usefulness of thedistinction, but does not repudiate its existence. Rather, it prepares us to live beyond suchartificial categories, unsettling our dogmatic beliefs, and humbles us by making usreconsider the notion that we have fixed and ultimate essences.

Irony also facilitates the emergence of authenticity by helping the individual to become detached from her self. All creation requires detachment. The writer, for example,scrutinizes her writings as if they were someone else’s. The same is true of the authentic formation of the self. Irony brings out the self-detachment needed to transcend subjectivity, and enables the individual to refocus, as it were, on the emerging authenticself. The ironic posture, and especially self-orientated irony, enables us to take ourselveslightly, keeping us from regarding ourselves in terms of rigid a priori essences. It allowsus to pass from the domain of Being to the pathos of Becoming, from inauthenticity togenuinely authentic modes of life.

On this account, an ironic person does not commit suicide. According to existentialistteaching, suicide is a philosophical mistake: in contemplating suicide one regards one’s self as a defined entity whose essence cannot be changed. The spirit of irony, by contrast,aims at changing one’s personality and its attendant circumstances; in spite of its negativetactics, irony is ultimately positive. The ironic stance assumes that a person is free notonly to change her or his own self but also to create it at will. It thus differs fromnihilistic cynicism, which denies all values, including those of authenticity and self-creation. Cynicism, and perhaps sarcasm as well, are expressions of despair anddefeatism. Irony is the voice of commitment and caring, the optimistic call to innovationand formation, rebirth and transformation. Irony is negation of the negative—the ethic which has lost its validity; cynicism is its passive acceptance. Cynicism seeks to avoidunfavourable situ-ations by escaping, by shying away from, any constructiveconfrontation. Irony resolves problems by aborting stale commitment to prevailing normsand opening up new directions. As Kierkegaard notes, ‘irony and resignation are two


opposite poles’.17 Cynicism is premised on thoroughgoing passivity, on acceptance of‘familiar evils’, whereas irony seeks to alienate us from them by inciting us to restore our selves and create a new ethic. At the very least, it calls for readiness for the pathos ofconstant change, exhorting us to be faithful to the scripts we write for ourselves.

This call must be internalized by those who seek authenticity, who feel the urge to forge genuine selves beyond conventional community values and modes of behaviour.Hence irony’s potential influence is limited to those in whom it finds existential resonance. Not all of us are willing to become what we are; not all of us possess thecourage to shake ourselves free of the conformist mob. Many of us lack the power tochallenge public opinion, and fear the solitudes of authenticity. Literary enticement toauthenticity is thus directed at the courageous few who are able to bear the uncertainty ofthe search for authenticity and the pain that will be incurred in the often frustratingsearch. But for those who do dare to enter this adventurous life of overcoming oneselfand creating it anew, irony is like the garments of the ancient Greek statues: it not onlyveils but also reveals that which it veils—the path to authenticity.

Notes

1 ‘Twilight of the Idols’, in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann (New York:Viking, 1954), p. 470.

2 Thus, e.g., Rennie, the ‘inauthentic’ heroine of Barth’s The End of the Road (New York: Doubleday, 1958), tells Jake (the character striving to attain authenticity) that Joe (a parodyof an ‘honest’ man) is genuine because ‘Real people aren’t any different when they’re alone. No masks. What you see of them is authentic’ (p. 70). Then Jake, stating that ‘nobody’s authentic’, persuades Rennie to spy on Joe, who is discovered parading naked in front of themirror, talking nonsense, picking his nose and masturbating all at once. For another exampleof a parody of existentialism, see B.Vian, L’écume des jours (Paris: Pauvert, 1963).

3 Cf. D.Cohn, Transparent Minds: Narratives Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978).

4 Les Mots (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), p. 89; The Words, trans. B.Frechtman (New York: GeorgeBraziller, 1964), p. 69. At the end of this personal account Sartre concludes with a tone ofresignation: ‘I lost myself’ (p. 153). His companion, Simone de Beauvoir, testifies in herautobiography that her quasi-autobiographical novel The Mandarins, which ‘described certain ways of living after the war’ (as Sartre’s trilogy Roads to Freedom depicted certain ways of living during the war) was really ‘an evocation’. Two pages later she claims that ‘one defect of diaries and autobiographies is that usually what “goes without saying” goes without being said, and thus one misses the essential’, namely, that these are disguised forms of enticement and evocation. See Simone de Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance, trans. R.Howard (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), pp. 282, 284. Cf. Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, which is a fictional ‘autobiographical’ account of Nietzsche’s life and intellectual development. The same can be said of Kierkegaard’s The Point of View for my Work as an Author.

5 S.Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 2.


Also see her discussion of the importance of events and actions in narrative texts (pp. 15–28, 61–3); and Wallace Martin, Recent Theories of Narrative (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 81ff., 173.

6 A concise and systematic exposition of Jaspers’s key notion of Grenzsituationen is found in his Philosophy, trans. E.B.Ashton (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1969–71), vol. II, pp. 178ff.

7 The Portable Conrad, ed. M.D.Zabel (New York: Viking, 1947), p. 573. 8 ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’, in Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans.

R.J.Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 129. 9 J.-P. Sartre, ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’, in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, ed.

and trans. W.Kaufmann (Cleveland, Ohio: Meridian, 1956), pp. 291, 300. 10 Camus, The Outsider, pp. 113–16. 11 We shall see in Chapter 5 that this claim applies even to Heidegger. 12 Wayne C.Booth, A Rhetoric of Irony (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. ix

and the last sentences in the book. 13 D.C.Muecke, The Compass of Irony (London: Methuen, 1969), pp. 5–6. 14 See ibid., pp. 19–20, and D.C.Muecke, Irony and the Ironic (London: Methuen, 1970), p. 39.

Cf. Samuel Johnson’s admirably concise definition of irony: A mode of speech of which themeaning is contrary to the words’, quoted in D.J.Enright, The Alluring Problem: An Essay on Irony (London: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 5.

15 Booth, A Rhetoric of Irony, p. 240. 16 Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. and trans. A.Dru (London: Oxford University Press,

1938), p. 159. 17 Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. H.V.Hong and E.H.Hong

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), vol. II, p. 250.


3 Kierkegaard’s ironic ladder to

authentic faith

The search for authenticity in modern Western thought begins with the desperate journalentry, dated 1 August, 1835, of a 22-year-old Dane: ‘the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die’.1

Kierkegaard was not talking about objective cognitive truth; nor was he referring to theintellectual act of rationally explicating some kind of philosophy. He wanted to create aquality of life, a pattern of life which would be true for him and would enable him to betrue to himself. The creation of authentic life is an existential vocation; it has nothing todo with theoretical speculation. Kierkegaard stresses this point in the next entry in hisjournal, claiming that he wants

to lead a complete human life and not merely one of the understanding, so that I should not…base the development of my thought upon…something that is called objective…but upon something which grows together with the deepest roots of my life.2

He asks: ‘What is truth but to live for an idea?’ Here we encounter the insight that authentic life has less to do with a specific concrete content, a ‘what’, than with some particular path, with a ‘how’.

Another existential leitmotif hinted at here is the bond which must link the act ofphilosophizing with the personal life of the philosopher. Doctrine and life must overlap.Kierkegaard was the first thinker in modern times to insist on making the process ofphilosophizing a relevant and formative force in his own life, as an explicit protestagainst the objective and non-personal style of traditional philosophy, epitomized by Hegel.

A note written by Kierkegaard four years before his death indicates the practical objective of his philosophizing: ‘my task has continually been to provide the existentialcorrective by poetically presenting the ideals and inciting people’.3 Indeed, the passage points to three main themes dominating the literature on authenticity: (1) the existential,as opposed to purely theoretical, aim of changing the reader’s life; (2) the poetic-literary means employed by the philosopher to achieve this aim; (3) the indirect tactics used toincite and entice the reader to seek authenticity.

At the outset, Kierkegaard found himself deeply confused as to the proper ‘anchor’ for


his quest to form his own identity. In one of the most important entries in his voluminousjournal he tells us:

I have looked in vain for an anchorage in the boundless sea of pleasure and in the depth of understanding…. But the pleasure did not outlast the moment of understanding and left no profound mark upon me. It seems as though I had not drunk from the cup of wisdom, but had fallen into it. What did I find? Not my Self, which was what I was looking for…. And so the first thing to be decided, was the seeking and finding of the Kingdom of Heaven…. Although I am still far from having reached so complete an understanding of myself, I have, with profound respect for its significance, tried to preserve my individuality—worshipped the unknown God.

(Dru, pp. 17–19)

When people are confused as to their self-identity, a serious quest for genuine self canbegin. When one is painfully conscious of the danger of abandoning one’s self, a cry for authenticity is heard. Indeed, given the negative sense of the notion of authenticity,discussed above, and commonsense psychology, one might dare to put forward thefollowing rule: only one who has deeply experienced the conflict between authentic andinauthentic patterns of life and has frequently struggled to decide between them canbecome conscious of the importance of being authentic. Only such a person willrecognize the vital significance of authentic identity and strive to make it an operativevalue in his life. We set about looking for our selves when we feel we are actuallyexperiencing the disintegration of our selves and our own identity. The role of theseexistential predicaments explains the tendency of the philosophers of authenticity toengage in self-questioning and self-analysis; to probe the innermost layers of their selves and their turbulent lives. Continuous self-examination helps one to see that, to use Sartre’s words, one is not what one is, and one is what one is not.

From the first words he puts down, Kierkegaard reveals a fundamentally religious personality. In his actual life, however, he did not always feel or live religiously, and wasdiverted many times on to different paths. His personal solution to this conflict was toreturn to or recover an abandoned religious ‘Self’. Hence his insistence on connecting authenticity with genuine faith and his appeal to his readers to return to the origins ofChristianity, to original, authentic faith. In a posthumously published book, he asserted: ‘I am and was a religious author…the whole of my work as an author is related to Christianity, to the problem “of becoming a Christian”, with a direct or indirect polemic against the monstrous illusion we call Christendom.’4 Kierkegaard is thus determined to entice his readers to ‘leap’ into and embrace passionately the genuine ‘religious sphere’ of existence, to ‘become Christian’ and live intensely, fulfilling all the demands of a faiththat can transform the whole of life.

I

Kierkegaard’s ironic ladder to authentic faith 21

Kierkegaard’s demand that we reshape and reform our selves is also one he made of himself. Kierkegaard’s efforts are directed to the problem of how ‘to become a Christian’, not how to be one. His personal life and writings are a persistent quest for authenticselfhood,5 and he indirectly entreats his readers to undertake a similar journey.

Many psychobiographical interpretations of Kierkegaard attempt to reduce his writingsto his life, and in particular to various vague or hypothetical psychological and physicalmaladies6—they are a ‘symptom of his sickness’,7 deriving from sado-masochism, neurosis, schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, and other disorders. I believe,however, that it is Kierkegaard’s writing, rather, that defines his life, crystallizing and forming it by bringing forth the personal authenticity he so desired. Thepsychobiographical treatments consistently misinterpret the fundamental drive ofKierkegaard’s philosophizing and blindly assume it revolves around events of the past rather than concern for the future.

While Kierkegaard’s philosophical activity originates in the problematic predicamentsof his life, it seeks a wider resolution of this existential confusion. Moreover, to regardKierkegaard’s writing as solely concerned with his own existence is mistaken: it alsodirects itself to the problems of the reader and the ‘age’. Otherwise, Kierkegaard would have been quite content to leave his philosophical meditations in the form of personaljournals and would not have bothered with tiresome and costly publication for the generalpublic. To reduce Kierkegaard’s thought to his life deprives readers of the ‘corrective’ he seeks to give them.

The problematic relation between Kierkegaard’s life and his writings can be describedas an existential dialectic of authenticity. As we saw, the problem of personal identity andKierkegaard’s perplexity about what he was and what he had to do to attain authentic selfhood brought him to write and to philosophize. However, the actual act of writing wasin turn the means that allowed Kierkegaard to reach the threshold of authenticity. Bydealing with the question of ‘how to become what one is’, Kierkegaard gradually became what he was—an individual with a strong religious pathos. As we have noted, this religious bent was initially problematic for him.8 However, this ambivalence regarding religion settles as, in his writings, Kierkegaard discusses and resolves conflicts betweendifferent existential views of life. Kierkegaard utilizes quasi-Hegelian dialectic—the explication of an already given content by elevating (aufheben) it from the obscure and indefinite complex which contains a destructive antithesis to it. However, while Hegeldeals rationally and systematically with the explication of the Absolute Spirit pervadinghistory, Kierkegaard uses indirect and non-rational enticement to uncover, intensify and reactivate, in his own life and in the lives of his readers, the hidden and implicit sourcesof their authentic selves. The target of the dialectical process is shifted from the totality ofthe universe to the solitary ‘inwardness’ of the individual.

Kierkegaard’s literary work functions as a sort of temporary scaffolding to beabandoned once it has served its purpose, namely, to evoke and inspire readers to liveauthentic lives and to do so intensely ‘without regrets’. Like anyone else who tries to write, at the beginning Kierkegaard has only vague, implicit intuitions and insights aboutthe matters he intends to examine. As the act of writing progresses the structure of one’s ideas gradually comes into focus and defines the whole composition. The very act ofwriting becomes part of what is being communicated to the writer and then to the reader.


This is particularly true in Kierkegaard’s case, since what he intends to communicate is not a theoretical ‘content’ but a moral directive.

To attain authenticity, Kierkegaard must first generate meaning in his life. The sheer arbitrariness of life, and our lack of control over it, create the illusion that existence is aproduct of blind chance and we are without responsibility for its course. This leads toevasion of freedom and abandonment of the search for authenticity. Kierkegaard’s writings attempt, among other things, to portray the ‘stages on life’s way’ (to use the title of one of his books). They constitute a concrete and inspiring example of how theexistential dialectic of authenticity has actually worked in the life of the author.Kierkegaard states in his journals: ‘My writing is essentially my own development’, and says that in writing he came to understand himself.9 This development as a writer, and also as a person, eventually brought him to the point where, in 1848, the time had cometo abandon his indirect tactics and ‘come forward personally, definitely, and directly as one who wished to serve the cause of Christianity’ (Dru, p. 259).

Hence it is of little importance to try and correlate the stages of existence portrayed byKierkegaard in his works with different phases of his actual life. To find out, for example,whether Kierkegaard was actually an aesthetic type who lived an aesthetic life—according to his own definitions—while he was writing his aesthetic works is secondaryto the main question: what he tried to do in his writings, and what he attempted tocommunicate by them. In any case, his journals do not reveal the secrets of his personallife, since they deal mainly with the future and not the past or present. They areconcerned with the Self to come and not with the already-existing person. Even his ‘formal’ biography, laboriously pieced together from the manifold personae whichKierkegaard intentionally proffered, has little to offer. We ought not to forget, asKierkegaard reminds us, that at the time he wrote his aesthetic works, publishedpseudonymously, he also wrote numerous Christian ‘Edifying Discourses’ published under his own name. On the other hand, even during the so-called ‘religious’ stage of his life he wrote an ‘aesthetic’ work. And witness his own statement:

The religious is present from the beginning. Conversely, the aesthetic is present again at the last moment. After two years, during which religious works only were published, there follows a little aesthetic article.10

The desperate cry for authenticity cannot be mechanically deduced from the actual life-experiences of the man Søren Kierkegaard. What is of importance for us is the fact that this individual strove, by means of his writing, to intensify both his sense of authenticselfhood and the religious pathos he felt at the outset, a pathos which gradually gained theupper hand. The existential dialectic of authenticity Kierkegaard used, and perhaps alsolived by, shaped his life and gave it a definite direction, but it is presented to us for ourown use, as it was presented to his own generation. As such, it must be taken seriously byall who are moved by a similar existential aim: to become what we are.

II


The attempt to encourage authentic modes of living in his contemporaries, the secondleitmotif of Kierkegaard’s writings (the first being the inward intensification of his ownself), gives rise to the obvious question: what was so wrong with Kierkegaard’s age that he felt compelled to offer a ‘corrective’? What was there to correct? The answer can befound in the first sentence of the essay ‘The Present Age’, published in 1846 under Kierkegaard’s own name: ‘Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion.11 Kierkegaard’s contemporaries indulge in ‘the coils and seductive uncertainty of reflection’, which kills action and brings them to ‘inertiae’. Much as Nietzsche asserts ‘Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion’,12

Kierkegaard holds that action requires passion, which is lost when the individual sinksinto the bottomless pit of reflection. Too much analysis leads to paralysis, and since ‘man stands or falls by his actions’, there is no way to attain authenticity without significantlifeshaping action. To counter this tendency to ‘over-reflectiveness’ that hinders the emergence of authenticity, Kierkegaard attempts to wake us from our existential slumbersby infusing us with passion, the motivating force for action.

By passion Kierkegaard does not mean any emotion that affects us, but rather, emotionoriginating in the first days of Christianity, more precisely, in the sufferings of JesusChrist on the Cross: an overpowering emotion that changes, or even ends, one’s life.

To be sure, his age is also pervaded by the ethos of sincerity and Hegelian ‘Reason’, an ethos which has led his generation into apathy, lack of commitment, shallowness, andevasion of any decisive and determined course of action. Kierkegaard did not want toabolish this ethic completely, but only to ‘correct’ it. He wanted to infuse his age with passion, contending that passion together with sincerity of intention producesauthenticity.13

To become existentially committed and to act decisively, Kierkegaard holds, one must feel passionately about the object of one’s commitment. Sincere intent alone is not sufficient. This addition of pathos to the ethos of sincerity—an empty and meaningless ethic that had lost its driving force—is Kierkegaard’s main contribution to the emergence of authenticity. Kierkegaard envisages genuine thinkers in constant opposition to theirage. And even if he intended only to ‘correct’ a lukewarm and flabby age, his thoughtwas revolutionary and was regarded as such by his contemporaries, as his conflicts withthe established Church and the Hegelian outlook attest.

We must remember that in speaking of ‘Reason’, and of the reflection which kills action, and hence individual authenticity, Kierkegaard was not referring only to Hegel’s immanently unfolding Reason in universal history. To be sure, he claims in many placesthat the sway of Hegelianism is responsible for the dissolution of the self: it favours theoverwhelming objectivity of abstractness over subjective individuality. Here, however,Kierkegaard has in mind reason as ‘the calculating intelligence’ (PA, p. 35). He refers to the human intellect, whose overpowering primacy was transforming everything into ideaswhich no one was able to experience ‘completely and personally’. ‘And thus’, Kierkegaard adds, ‘as one longs for the clink of real money, after the crackle of bank-notes, one longs nowadays for a little originality’ (ibid., p. 40). Here we find another meaning of authenticity, in addition to passionate commitment, namely, the return to thegenuine origins of our selves, our feelings and our beliefs. This notion of originality isconsistent with Kierkegaard’s view of the Christian faith, which for him starts and ends at


Calvary. Moreover, Kierkegaard believes that intellect and reasoning are the main ways in

which people escape their selfhood. Our intellect rationalizes away all avenues toauthenticity. It provides people with rationalizations for not becoming what they are. AndKierkegaard, who spent much time and energy on rationalizing his life in order to escapefrom commitment and from his genuine self, was well aware of this. Since Kierkegaardfelt that ‘for the individual as for the generation no task is more difficult than to escape from temptations of reflection’ (ibid., p. 42), he attempted to make passion for authenticaction a counter-temptation.

Another aspect of the ‘present age’ that requires ‘correcting’ has to do with ‘the levelling process’ that is an outcome, on the sociological and theoretical levels, of the abstract and ‘passionless’ nature of reflection. This levelling process is a symptom of thevictory of abstraction over the individual, and that of ‘the committee’ over personal commitment. The modern individual is ‘lost’ in the crowd and ‘at a loss’ without the crowd. The anonymity of man, and his impersonal education in industrial society, the‘abstract power’ of the state, change him into a ‘phantom’ in ‘the public…which is a monstrous nothing’. It destroys his individuality, externalizes his ‘inwardness’ and makes him forget what it means to be a genuine self. This shallow and confused age relies onstatistics, making public opinion the criterion of truth. It demands that the levellingprocess also expresses itself sociologically in the form of ‘mathematical equality’.

Kierkegaard was well aware that his antidote—passion—might bring with it ‘atrocious sins’ (ibid., p. 43). But this risk is worth taking because it is the only thing that can alsobring us to ‘the good’ and to the performance of ‘great things’. What must be pointed out, however, is that in this small but brilliant book the genuine either/or emerges: not theearlier either/or between the aesthetic and ethical spheres of existence, but the realexistential choice—to become a selfless ‘nothing at all’, in the midst of the abstract collective ‘public’ and ‘a deathly silence’, or to become a genuine and concrete individual by committing the ‘leap of enthusiasm’, the ‘leap into the arms of God’—either to embrace the authentic faith or to become a two-dimensional phantom. It is true that ‘enthusiasm may end in disaster, but levelling is eo ipso the destruction of the individual’ (ibid., pp. 68, 50, 82, 54). Thus Kierkegaard here posits a genuine choice:either religious authenticity or nothing.

Clearly, however, he prefers the dangers of an authentic pathos of faith to an ethosresulting in the levelling and annihilation of selfhood. One of his reasons is that inaddition to himself ‘there are still people who passionately want to be what they ought to be’ (ibid., p. 44), who long for something higher and more meaningful in the midst ofongoing levelling processes in the social, political and intellectual spheres. Kierkegaardwants to make this inclination explicit, to speed it up and broaden it, by harnessing to itthe motivating passion, that is, by using the very forces now directed toward thedestruction of individuality.

Here we arrive at the dialectic of Kierkegaard’s indirect enticement. By employing the very forces that prevail in his age and hinder the emergence of authenticity he wants to assist us in overcoming them. Thus, as he repeats several times, ‘reflection is not the evil’; it is ‘not in itself something harmful’. On the contrary, it is necessary to utilize its terminology, which was very much in vogue at the time; and Kierkegaard employs the


prevailing views of aesthetics, ethics and Christian sentiments to impel his readers toeventually adopt their antitheses: authentic faith and genuine selfhood. Thus, forexample, he hopes that from the ideal of the equality of men will emerge the passionatebelief in ‘the equality of all men before God’ (ibid., p. 57).

Generally speaking, Kierkegaard believes that out of Hegel’s ‘system’ of Reason and the levelling ethic a genuine individual will emerge. And since this antithetical processlacks the deterministic necessity of Hegel’s rational dialectics, Kierkegaard wants to further it and overcome those trends that go against it. It is true that ‘the time has come for work to begin, for every individual must work for himself, each for himself’, but Kierkegaard, becoming ‘unrecognizable’ and hidden ‘like a plain-clothes policeman’ (ibid., p. 81), will indirectly assist these individuals ‘to make the decision which he himself has reached’ (ibid., p. 80). The ‘plain-clothes policeman’ appears once again as a ‘secret agent’ (p. 82). Kierkegaard pictures himself as a spy in ‘the present age’ (that is, in the enemy camp): one who steals information, ideals and vocabularies from the prevailing ethos and brings them to his isolated place ‘before God’ to use against ‘the Public’.

Kierkegaard believes that his call to us to take the painful road to authenticity may yetsucceed because of the decline of the ‘present age’ and its prevailing ethos. Two strong powers of his age had lost their authority. On the religious plane, there had been awatering-down of Christian faith to a comfortable code of shallow bourgeois ethics.14 On the intellectual level, the Hegelian system, as an empty abstraction, had lost itsmotivating and inspiring power. Truth and morality had given way to oratory. Word andgesture had replaced life. The time had come for the subjective pathos of authenticity.

In the twilight of the prevailing ethic and ideals, we have to rely on ourselves alone. Kierkegaard wants to speed up this process with his enticing tactic of using the ideals ofHegel’s philosophy, Kant’s ethics, and the residue of Christian sentiment—but with the goal of overcoming their present decadent forms and correcting them. Kierkegaardsubjectifies the Hegelian notion of objectivity; he employs the aesthetic and deepens it toits destruction; he adopts ethical generaliza-tions and personifies them. These ‘correctives’ work by taking a notion and intensifying it until it becomes an antidote to that very notion.

III

Why did Kierkegaard employ indirect tactics rather than argue directly and rationallywith his readers? What accounts for his tortuous device of publishing ‘aesthetic’ works under various pseudonyms, and what is the relation between this tactic, whichKierkegaard calls ‘indirect communication’, and his goal of enticement?

Kierkegaard wrote many of his books under different noms de plume. He followed this practice in all the works he later called his ‘aesthetic’ corpus, from Either/Or (1843) onwards. These pseudonyms were not intended to conceal his authorship, which wascommon knowledge in the then small town of Copenhagen and was on file with the


government censor long before his explicit acknowledgement in ‘A First and Last Declaration’, appended as an afterthought to the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. In this note Kierkegaard states that ‘in the pseudonymous works there is not a single wordwhich is mine’. It is not he but fictitious authors who wrote those ‘aesthetic’ books. In this ‘first’, but not the ‘last’, ‘declaration’, Kierkegaard says: ‘My pseudonymity or polynymity has not had a causal ground in my person…but it has an essential ground in the character of the production.’15

First, the use of pseudonyms has to do with Kierkegaard’s own dialectic of authenticity. Being the author of the pseudonymous ‘authors’, each representing a certain view of life in as ideal a form as possible, Kierkegaard maintains poetic distance from hiscreations. In his pseudonymous writings he is neither an aesthetic person nor a moral onenor does he embrace religious faith genuinely and passionately like his Abraham; he is allof these and, because of this, none at all. But principally he is the Kierkegaard of the late‘Christian Discourses’, written under his own name, who wants ‘to become’ an authentic ‘Christian’. But still he cannot identify authentically with any of the imaginary writers’ statements. In order to crystallize his existential chaos into an authentic wholeness he hasto detach himself mentally from the aesthetic experiences he has had in his life and fromthe ethical aspirations that have driven him. To ‘become a Christian’ Kierkegaard needs to intensify his religious sentiments; to create a passion-ate pathos. The existential process of attaining authentic selfhood always implies overcoming those elements in ourlives and characters that hinder this process. Thus Kierkegaard’s detachment from the aesthetic pathos, from the ethical-reflective ethic, and from inauthentic Christianity, help him control these dimensions of his personality for the sake of his own religiosity. Youcan become what you are by not being what you are not. By not identifying himself with the aesthetic life-view and/or bourgeois ethic in his pseudonymous writings, Kierkegaardbecame a writer whose ‘last group [of writings] is exclusively religious’, as he testifies in his Point of View (PV, p. 13). He ultimately found his identity as a religious author; his existential confusions were overcome by his creations. In this Kierkegaard is like hisGod, who ‘communicates in creating, so as, by creating, to give independence over against Himself’ (CUP, p. 232). Kierkegaard, like God, wants to create his own authenticself by indirect communication.

Yet his indirect communication is not only an expression of his own existential searchfor authenticity. It is also directed at persons whose ‘existence presents itself to them as a confusion’ (CUP, p. 236). Their confusion, however, is blunted by the prevailing ethos ofreflection, which puts them in a state of inertia. Kierkegaard does not disdain shockingthem because what he most wants to do is to change them. However, to shock them hefirst needs to attract their attention. One way to do so is to provide his aesthetic bookswith ‘the interest of novelty’ by using pseudonymous masks. This succeeded, at least according to his testimony, in the case of Either/Or, which ‘caused almost a riot, so that the book was bought, and is even supposed to be sold out’ (CUP, p. 254). Masks attract audiences: we want to know who is behind them. Our curiosity is aroused and we readthe disguised book, opening ourselves to indirect enticement.

In this respect the technique of indirect communication serves as an initial stage of the enticement procedure. But what accounts for the indirectness of the enticement itself?Kierkegaard provides several hints, one in Point of View:


Assuming then that a person is the victim of an illusion, and that in order to communicate the truth to him the first task…is to remove the illusion—if I do not begin by deceiving him, I must begin with direct communication…but an illusion stands in the way…. What then does it mean ‘to deceive’? It means that one does not begin directly with the matter one wants to communicate, but begins by accepting the other man’s illusion as good money.

(p. 40)

And in the Postscript he says: ‘the art of communication…becomes the art of taking away, of luring something away from someone’ (ibid., p. 245). Kierkegaard wishes todispel the illusion that we are authentic Christians and authentic human beings. He wants‘to take away’ the Hegelian rational ethos of objectivity and reflective life and to lure usinto the pathos of authenticity. But one cannot openly communicate one’s intention of enticing the reader, just as one cannot deceive somebody by announcing this intention tohim. To present the way to authenticity we must first ‘take away’ the illusion that one is already authentic. But we cannot achieve this directly because it will cause resistance.Kierkegaard’s aesthetic works are acceptable to his contemporaries, who live and think in ‘aesthetic categories’ yet delude themselves that they live in a ‘Christian’ age. Thus Kierkegaard speaks the aesthetic language of his age to lure his audience to a differentexistential sphere. He confesses: ‘The deception consists in the fact that one talks thusmerely to get to the religious theme’ (ibid., p. 41).

But there are still more fundamental reasons for Kierkegaard’s method of indirect communication. Other features have an even deeper ‘essential ground in the character of the production’. The use of varied literary forms and unsystematic writing suggests thatthere is no objective or rational way in which Kierkegaard’s views about authenticity can be presented or argued for. Since authentic passionate commitment has no concrete,cognitive content, one has no recourse but to the indirect arousal of the desired pathos.Kierkegaard’s unique style intrigues and fascinates us and creates a suitable psychological atmosphere for change. To affirm his existential claim about ‘truth as subjectivity’, about authenticity as a personal appropriation of the pathos of sincere commitment and free choice, Kierkegaard uses indirect communication, above all tochange the reader, not just to enlighten him. Enlightenment is the aim of directcommunication free of personal passion and paradox. It tries to provide us with‘objective’ opinion and information, much of it completely irrelevant to our most urgent existential concerns. Its recipients are therefore the ‘paragrapheaters’ who ‘have forgotten what inwardness is’. ‘Suppose,’ Kierkegaard says, ‘a man wished to communicate the conviction that it is not the truth but the way that is the truth, i.e. that the truth exists onlyin the process of becoming…and hence that there is no result’, then ‘the difference between subjective and objective thinking must express itself also in the form ofcommunication suitable to each’. But ‘direct communication presupposes certainty’ and ‘certainty is impossible’ for anyone in the process of becoming authentic.16

Kierkegaard aims to inculcate in us the pathos of authentic religious sentiments whichcannot be communicated or aroused by traditional philosophical language that aspires tocreate an objectively transparent atmosphere. Moreover, this language, at least in


Kierkegaard’s time—the reference here is to Hegel—was used for the conceptual explication of reality and the constitution of a total system that transforms the individualinto an abstract entity and estranges her from her search for authenticity. Any attempt toreach the subjective sphere with this argumentative, objective language is bound to fail.This is well understood by Kierkegaard, who says in his diary: ‘the subjectivity…existing [existerende] in isolation wants to communicate himself, something he cannot possibly do directly, since it is a contradiction. One may very well want to communicate himself,like the person in love, but always indirectly’ (Hong, I, p. 259). You cannot convince someone to love you passionately, but you can entice him into it. Moreover, you cannotconvince someone that you love him intensely by using rational and direct arguments.You will be much more convincing if you show him indirectly, namely, by sincerelycommitted and passionate actions. Kierkegaard’s writings are just such acts of enticement. His writing, taken as a whole, with its inherent existential dialectic ofauthenticity, provides a personal example of this indirect mode of trying to establishone’s authentic selfhood.

Kierkegaard was deeply convinced that certain things are vital but cannot be directlyexpressed by means of prepositional language, be it as univocal as is possible in everydaylanguage. Certain things—especially authentic pathos devoid of any definite and rationalcontent—cannot be spoken of propositionally. Here we see a certain similarity between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, the well-known last proposition of whose Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus states that anything we cannot speak about directly ‘we must pass over in silence’. Wittgenstein was in no doubt that everything of importance, especiallythe ethical, is inexpressible; the Tractatus was the impossible attempt to express it. Wittgenstein was a good Kierkegaardian, since Kierkegaard likewise thinks that the‘things’ of paramount importance for one’s life cannot be spoken of directly and must bemade manifest indirectly if we are to be enticed to follow them. The affinity between thetwo thinkers is evident from Wittgenstein’s admiration for Kierkegaard and his claim‘There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.’17

The fictional author of Fear and Trembling is Johannes de silentio. Kierkegaard believes that it is possible to indicate the patterns of authenticity and subjectivityindirectly, to feel and portray them poetically, to reveal them in outstanding and fictionalindividuals. It may even be possible to describe them as existential possibilities, to bechosen freely by readers. In other words, it is feasible to talk about them indirectlywithout taking them as, or making them into, direct propositional objects. ThusKierkegaard does not talk to us directly, but creates imaginary characters and writers whospeak to each other without ever reaching any definite conclusion, as in Plato’s aporetic dialogues. If no definite conclusions are drawn in a work which dramatically engages theattention, readers are enticed into considering the issue for themselves and concludingsubjectively from their individual points of view. The imaginary characters forcefullyexpress their respective life-views, and the reader is incited to take sides by making anexistential decision to adopt for himself one of these possibilities, notably the religiousone, in which the required passionate commitment will help him attain genuine selfhood.Kierkegaard’s challenge needs no reply. We need only consider it and become what we are.


Thus the purpose of philosophical discourse in Kierkegaard is completely different from that in Hegel, which is rooted in the tradition of the vita contemplativa. Kierkegaard seeks to move us to a vita activa of free and decisive choices and authentic actions thatcan create genuine selfhood. He asks us to overcome our tendency to find refuge fromour selves in the world and flee from the subjective reality of choice into the domain ofspeculation. In the world of theoria, in the Greek sense of speculation and observation,rationalization may gain the upper hand over rationality, and the impersonal and coldobjectivity of reflection or ‘overreflectiveness’ may swallow up the passions of livingpersons. Hence the dominance of Hegelian philosophy was regarded by Kierkegaard asproof that his age had ‘forgotten what inwardness is’. Thus he ‘maintained an indirect polemic against speculative philosophy’, declaring against Hegel that ‘truth is subjectivity’.18

It is important to realize in this context that Kierkegaard was not denying the traditional definition of truth as correspondence between thought and reality. It would be self-defeating to argue for a theory that subjectivity is truth. His conception of subjectivity and truth gives philosophy a totally different context from that provided bythe various epistemological answers to perennial philosophical problems. By declaringtruth to be subjectivity, Kierkegaard tried to shift the attention of philosophers and theirreaders from objective knowledge to subjective and existential concerns—identity, genuine selfhood and authenticity. He sought a truth which was ‘true for him’, with which he could identify, and which he could appropriate into his innermost self tobecome what he authentically was. And since passion and sincerity of active commitmentare authenticity, Kierkegaard sought the object that would be able to incite in him thehighest passion possible. For him, this object was the Christian God. Since ‘the objective accent falls on WHAT is said, the subjective accent on HOW it is said’ (CUP, p. 181), and since to be true to one’s self lies in the ‘how’ of the subject’s relationship, the fullest authenticity attainable by human beings is in the relationship in which the subjectiveelement—the passion with which one holds to an object—reaches its highest intensity. ‘But the passion of the infinite is precisely subjectivity, and thus subjectivity becomes thetruth’ (CUP, p. 181). This ‘truth’ is not cognitive but conative. It has to do with actions, passions and sentiments—in short, with the pathos of ‘inwardness’ and authenticity. In this context ‘truth is subjectivity’ means truth as authenticity rather than truth as the objective value of the propositional content of sentences about reality or about othersentences: it is the internal harmony and correspondence between our hearts and ouractions, not that between our sentences and external objects.

Kierkegaard is aware that he cannot convince us rationally to choose this search forharmony. Such a directive would be self-defeating, since one cannot force authenticity.One can lead rational people to the waters of choice, but one cannot make them drink. Hethinks, however, that one can make them thirst for their selves. The function ofKierkegaard’s enticing philosophy is to make our mouths dry, to heighten rather than to slake our thirst for subjectivity. Pseudonyms, humour and, above all, irony—all help him indirectly to discredit common refuges from authenticity: the shelters devoid ofsignificant existential import where we become inauthentic, one-dimensional objects. Irony is especially helpful in indicating the way, pointing to that which cannot be said.Ironic statements are ambivalent, carrying a surface affirmation subtended by an


unspoken negation. Irony helps to portray a given pattern of life and, as it were, assert itwhile simultaneously denying it; the reader is left wondering what is actually true, andhas no choice but to choose for himself. Thus irony is both a kind of a-rational literary affirmation and a refutation.

IV

Irony is the main device Kierkegaard used to entice his readers to espouse theinexpressible patterns of authenticity. It is not surprising, therefore, that in his Master’s dissertation, The Concept of Irony (1841), he examined the philosophical significanceand existential potential of the ironic stance.19 This book was written under his own name and not under one of the many pseudonyms he used for his ‘aesthetic’ writings, which are ironic par excellence since their external content is incompatible with the underlyingmotive for their production. The Concept of Irony has special relevance because of itsconclusion: ‘As philosophers claim that no true philosophy is possible without doubt, so by the same token one may claim that no authentic life is possible without irony.’20

The main part of the dissertation portrays Socrates as an ironic subject confronting the prevailing ethos. In Socrates, Kierkegaard depicted himself. He saw himself as aChristianized analogue of Socrates, as a ‘gadfly’ of the ‘present age’ who used irony to sting people into perceiving the inauthenticity of their Christianity. In Kierkegaard’s eyes, Socrates was a turning-point in the course of history since he was the first to proclaim the rights of subjectivity over objectivity. He sought to move the centre ofgravity from the traditional objective morality of custom to subjective morality basedupon individual free conscience: ‘The standpoint of Socrates is subjectivity, inwardnessreflecting upon itself, [which] in relation to itself loosens and dissolves the existent.’21

Socrates thus won ‘negative freedom’ (freedom from the conventional-social conditioning of the prevailing ethic). Using irony, Socrates actually confronted the ethicof honesty and sincerity. He was, according to Kierkegaard, the first thinker heroicallyand self-consciously to lead the individual revolt against objectivity. He thus opened the way to an authentic subjective self, relatively independent of social and politicalinstitutions. The Socratic model showed Kierkegaard that irony can be the highroad tospeaking of authenticity, since it uses conventional language to undermine traditionalvalues.

On this Socratic basis Kierkegaard defines irony as ‘infinite absolute negativity’ (CI, p. 276). With his aporetic irony, Socrates became ‘estranged from existence’, hovering ‘in ironic satisfaction’ above the determinants of self, such as state, society and religion. Like Kierkegaard, Socrates stood in opposition to a world in decline, to an ethic which had lostits validity. He had arrived on the scene in an age when the divine was becoming extinct,before its incarnation in the body of Christ. He therefore had no choice but absolutenegativity, offering no positive content but the negative freedom of reflection. Havingnone of Kierkegaard’s notions of the pathos of passionate commitment to faith, he could not become the thinker of authenticity. His irony was infinite negativity, since sheer


reflectiveness, without positive existential content, opens itself to doubt. With no reasonfor discontinuing the process, it finally ‘dissolves’ everything, paralysing any definite action short of its own destruction (witness Socrates’ self-inflicted deathsentence).

Yet Kierkegaard was attracted to this picture of Socrates as ironic subject in an age ofreligious decline, where the pathos of subjective inwardness was swallowed up by thesuperficial objective ethic, itself on the verge of decline:

With every turning point in history there are two movements to be observed. On the one hand, the new shall come forth; on the other, the old must be displaced…and seen in all its imperfection, and here we meet the ironic subject…. The ironist has advanced beyond the reach of his age and opened a front against it. That which shall come is hidden from him, concealed behind his back, but the actuality he hostilely opposes is the one he shall destroy.

(CI, pp. 277–8)

The ironic subject, therefore, has no choice but to speak the language of the decliningethos of his age while aiming at a new, as yet unborn ethic. By doing this he entices us toforgo our inauthentic illusions and selves and marks the way to the pathos of authenticity.

Kierkegaard here emphasizes that irony is ‘a negative concept’: it ‘established nothing, for that which is to be established lies behind it’: hence its intimate relation with authenticity, which is also a negative notion in a negative age, that is, in an age which haslost its objective ethos. Irony alone cannot establish a new ethic, but by negating thediscredited ethic it can augur the birth of a new one. Hence Kierke-gaard concludes: ‘Irony is like the negative way, not the truth but the way’ (CI, pp. 50, 278, 340). It is the way to subjectivity as the ‘truth’ of one’s ‘inwardness’, being, perhaps, only a transitional step before a new or renewed objective ethos.

Irony is negative in another sense too, since its basic feature, as Kierkegaard puts it, is to affirm the opposite of what is meant or felt: the essence (meaning) is not theappearance (the ironic figure of speech or phrase). In this respect it is the language of thegenuine poet, portrayed poetically as ‘an unhappy man who in his heart harbours a deep anguish, but whose lips are so fashioned that the moans and cries which pass over themare transformed into ravishing music’ (Either/ Or, I, p. 49).

Another facet of irony has direct relevance to the enticement to authenticity: ‘The ironic figure of speech cancels itself, however, for the speaker presupposes his listenersunderstand him, hence through a negation of the immediate phenomenon the essenceremains identical with the phenomenon’ (CI, p. 265). Ironic communication is contingentupon the reader’s understanding that he faces irony. But only one who seeks authenticity,who stands beyond the ‘present age’ of dishonest honesty and feels the urge for a genuine self, is able to see that he confronts an ironic situation. Just as only one with a sense ofhumour can appreciate jokes, so only a person who can feel that his self is not his owncan respond to the ironic tactic of enticement. This is what Kierkegaard means by ‘Irony is a determination of subjectivity’ (CI, p. 275). The individual determined to form his own self and become an authentic person is the proper target for the ironic posture.

This brings us to Kierkegaard’s notion of irony from the perspective of the individual who adopts irony as a total existential attitude to life:


No authentic human life is possible without irony. When irony has first been mastered it…limits, renders finite, defines, and thereby imparts stability, character, and consistency…. He who does not understand irony and has no ear for its whisperings lacks eo ipso… the absolute beginning of the personal life.

(CI, pp. 338–9)

By irony ‘mastered’ Kierkegaard means irony that is consciously used as a method and instrument and not as an end in itself. As an end in itself it can mislead and destroy. If weare not able to direct it to attaining our own purposes, then ‘irony is an abnormal development which, like the abnormality of the livers of Strasburger geese, ends by killing the individual’ (Hong, II, p. 262). It drives us to a reflective regression ad infinitum, without repose or stable commitment, until it paralyses our will to live. This isexactly what happened in the case of Socrates, who, according to Kierkegaard, lacked thestabilizing content of passionate faith. ‘Therefore Socrates’ influence was simply to awaken—midwife that he was—not redeeming except in an inauthentic sense’ (Hong, II, p. 256). But if one uses irony in a constructive and controllable way, then it becomes a‘guide’ and a means for moulding one’s genuine self. This is the ‘truth of irony’ about which Kierkegaard speaks at the end of his dissertation. To form freely one’s own self one must first detach oneself from it and work on it from the outside, as it were. Here, theironic posture helps significantly. Mastered irony allows one to judge one’s values as if they were someone else’s. It helps one to detach oneself from the prevailing values and modes of behaviour and yet to act within that ethos, to transform it from within.Moreover, if one succeeds in detaching one’s own self from the ‘levelling’ processes of the ‘present age’ this shows that one still has a subjective self to be detached from, which may encourage attempts to make it into a genuine self by free and fearless commitment toauthentic acts of faith. This is the reason for Kierkegaard’s ‘definition of irony’ as ‘the fusion of a passionately ethical view, which inwardly lays infinite stress upon the self—and of education which outwardly (among others) abstracts infinitely from the personalI’ (Dru, p. 139).

Here Kierkegaard calls the search for authenticity ‘a passionately ethical view’. This fits well with my interpretation of his notion of authenticity as ‘a passionate and sincere commitment or act’. Though the ‘maximum’ passion is to be found in religious faith,sincerity is an ethical category. The concept of authenticity thus does not belongexclusively to the religious realm. The concern of any individual with the character of hisown self is obviously an ethical issue. Although according to Kierkegaard thegenuineness of the self is grounded in passionate faith, this should not prevent us fromseeing that his concern with authenticity makes him an existentialist moralist par excellence. For authenticity is not a quality one either possesses or lacks; it is an attributeof the will to be able to create one’s genuine self. It characterizes the subject not just as part of nature, but as part of the moral realm. Against the impersonal and impassiveobjective ethic of tradition, Kierkegaard emerges as a moralist of the subjective pathos ofauthenticity. In moving from ethics to morality he uses ironic com-munication aimed at enticing us to follow the same path. The irony which seeks to help us attain this intenseauthenticity ‘is really the deepest irony…. But to excavate in the middle of


“Christendom” the types of being a Christian—this is the most intensive irony’ (Hong, II, p. 277).

V

Kierkegaard’s ironic ladder to authenticity has three rungs—the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious—the first two of which will produce despair. The reader’s motivation to go on living inauthentic modes of life is arrested by these ironic descriptions. These accountsof possible life-styles show disastrous consequences from the psychological point of view and pave the way to the existential change of the reader’s way of life and his self. Kierkegaard describes these steps as ‘views of life’, ‘existential categories’, ‘spheres of existence’, ‘modes of existing’ or ‘stages on life’s way’. As fundamental existential commitments which by definition cannot coexist, they are incompatible with one another.

The incompatibility of these life-styles, however, stems not only from the existentialand psychological point of view but also from theoretical considerations given byKierkegaard. Each ‘sphere of existence’ contains its own system of values. The choicemust be made without any guiding meta-principle but by an a-rational ‘leap’ of free choice which cannot be further defended. Kierkegaard strives to adopt religious faith, butfor him this concrete appropriation is not the ‘absolute truth’ but only his own passionate commitment. Here lies the main difference between Kierkegaard’s existential dialectic of authenticity and the Hegelian dialectic of Absolute Spirit. In the former there is aconspicuous lack of a rationally necessary transition from one form of life to another,reason having been dethroned from its ultimate role as the driving force of dialectics.Lacking ultimate authority, reason itself becomes open to challenge by the individual,who can always ask: ‘Why be rational at all?’ Thus choice and spontaneous freedom arereintroduced by Kierkegaard, and the Kantian and Hegelian rational or ethical way of lifeis just one possibility among many. Man can no longer live under the illusion that thechoice and, therefore, the responsibility for a system of values is out of his hands. ForHegel, freedom consists simply in following Reason, but for Kierkegaard followinganything means giving up one’s freedom and hence one’s authenticity.

Free choice is the mark of the ‘truly existent individual’—setting him off from the ‘crowd’. Kierkegaard’s point here has little to do with the metaphysical problem of freedom and determinism. His concern is with our subjective inward life and intentions.He does not question our belief and feeling that we have freedom of choice and does notconsider the traditional philosophical problem of whether one actually is free.Kierkegaard ‘brackets’ the external world.

His existential version of dialectic is individual, passionate and discontinuous,proceeding by sudden leaps and crises. Man is a living passion, not abstract reason.Hence the individual’s conflicting courses of action exist side by side without being synthesized. Conflict is present in any sphere of existence to which one commits oneself.Unlike Hegel’s dialectic, there is no necessary transition from one sphere to another, nocompromise or ‘mediation’ (to use a Hegelian concept) between them, and no rational


resolution of their ‘opposition’. The individual faces ‘paradoxes’, that is, opposed ways of life or alternative courses of action, and a choice must be made. This is exemplified inthe title of the work, where the two spheres of existence, the aesthetic and the ethical, aredescribed: Either/Or, as opposed to Hegel’s ‘both…and…’.

Here we face a serious problem in interpreting Kierkegaard’s doctrine of possible life-views. At first the existential spheres are presented as equally valid possibilities, and assuch Kierkegaard cannot directly show which is preferable. Later, however, he presentsthem as stages, as an actual progression from aesthetic to ethical and finally tofundamental religious commitment.22 This ambiguity persists throughout Kierkegaard’s writings and is neatly expressed by contrasting the notions of ‘spheres’ (Spoere), which can be simultaneously present and overlapping, and ‘stages’ (Stadier), which must be successive temporary steps. But in what sense are the earlier stages inferior to the finalone?

Some commentators have provided vague or partial answers to these questions. They speak, for instance, about ‘a mounting hierarchy of existential fullness’ and about ‘the development of the individual self’.23

It should be pointed out that the existential movement towards authenticity has nothing to do with a concept of ‘development’ or with the widespread notion of ‘self-realization’. Kierkegaard’s notion of authenticity is not about the realization or fulfilment of one’s self but about its spontaneous creation. The self is something that should be created andformed, not something possessing an intrinsic essence to be further developed.

Moreover, authentic selves do not exist; there are only certain individuals who carryout authentic acts and live authentic modes of life, in contradistinction to persons (in theLatin sense of persona as a player’s mask) who escape the responsibility and ‘dizziness’ of freedom into inauthentic ways of living. Thus authenticity has nothing to do withquantities and sequences in time but has to do with the quality and origin of action. Invarious psychoanalytic analogies and psychological interpretations of Kierkegaard’s ‘stages’ as ‘self-development’ the time factor becomes crucial, but in a philosophicalsense succession in time is irrelevant. An act either is or is not authentic. One cannotstipulate degrees of authenticity and progressive levels of its so-called realization. Hence there are no ‘stages’ of authenticity, and the notion is applicable only to the rhetoric of enticement.

Still, there is one important sense, beyond the rhetoric, in which the idea of stages is relevant to Kierkegaard’s notion of authenticity: ‘Johannes Climacus being purely subjective…shows that there is a “how” which has this quality, that if it is truly given, then the “what” is also given; and that it is the “how” of “faith”. Here quite certainly, we have inwardness at its maximum’ (Dru, p. 355; cf. CUP, p. 248).

Kierkegaard, referring to ‘Johannes the Climber’ (the pseudonymous writer of the Postscript, where the stages are arranged in a sevenfold scheme), postulates that if passion is ‘truly given’ it will result in authentic action. Maximum authenticity will befound in the realm of faith, where the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ overlap. But if Kierkegaard speaks of ‘inwardness at its maximum’, does this mean that there are lesser degrees of authenticity?

Not necessarily, as is already evident from the eloquent maxim presented underKierkegaard’s own name in his Edifying Discourses in Various Spirits from 1847:


‘PURITY OF HEART IS TO WILL ONE THING’.24 On my reading, this means that authenticity is sincerity of intention (‘purity of heart’) along with passion (‘to will’) directed at ‘one’ object. This ‘thing’, according to Kierkegaard, is ‘Good’ or ‘God’, but especially one’s own self. That is, authenticity consists in acts of willing passionately and sincerely to become a genuinely authentic individual. Hence becoming authentic requiresperpetual movement without definite results. It is ‘the way which is the truth’.

The scheme of existential spheres can also be said to contain ‘stages’ in terms of the intensity of the passion involved. Aesthetic objects annul passion, thereby destroyingauthenticity. Because of its reflective and abstract nature, the ethical object, thoughpreserving the sincerity of intent (sincerity being in itself an ethical category), cannotenlist the optimal intensity of passion required for authentic acts. Hence, Kierkegaardasserts, it is only in the religious sphere that the ‘what’ does not destroy the ‘how’. Appearing as an infinite being, it incites the most intense passion, and vice versa: acertain manner of willing and intending—infinite, that is, absolute and unconditional passion—gives the ‘what’ of faith. But it should be stressed that these internal stages of intensity of passion do not result in overall stages of ‘developing’ authenticity, since in Kierkegaard authenticity is possible in the sphere of faith alone. Thus here we haveinternal stages but an external dichotomy between the spheres.

The stages, however, are significant for the indirect tactic of enticement. Kierkegaard needed to arrest the most widespread modes of living, which, he held, were aestheticismand Romanticism. His age, which lacked passion, had ‘no values’ and was on the verge of completely losing the individual self. Kierkegaard, therefore, used aestheticRomanticcategories to inject a passion of commitment into the prevailing ‘apathy’. Moreover, Kierkegaard could not help having aesthetic tendencies himself. He had to start from theaesthetic modes of living in order to overcome them in his own person as well as in his‘age’. In his era of ‘Christendom’ without genuine ‘Christians’ there were many more ‘honest persons’ than authentically faithful individuals. Because of these historical,tactical and existential considerations, Kierkegaard begins with the ‘aesthetic sphere’, then moves to the ‘ethical sphere’.

The place accorded to the ethical sphere may also be connected with Kantian ethics and the Hegelian notion of Sittlichkeit. To understand Kierkegaard’s claim in the Postscript, ‘The ethical and the religious stages have in fact an essential relationship toone another’ (p. 261), we have to realize that the Kantian and Hegelian ethic of sincerity and honesty, which constitutes a social and bourgeois way of life, paves the way forKierkegaard’s morality of authenticity.

We should also keep in mind that Kierkegaard’s tactical ‘stages’ of enticement were related to his own life-experiences. Here his problematic use of the notions of ‘spheres’ and ‘stages’ becomes part of a personal dialectic. At the beginning the young Kierkegaard faced simultaneous overlapping spheres of existence. Later he formed hisown self by actualizing existential spheres of possibility. Then he realized that there was a ‘method in his madness’, namely, that there was a unifying dialectical movementprompting him to ‘leap’ from one sphere to another. Thus at the beginning there wereonly ‘spheres’ (a term frequently used in his earlier books), but retrospectively they became ‘stages’—in his life as well as in his writings.

Using the rhetoric of irony, Kierkegaard strives to entice us to choose freely,


passionately and sincerely, that is to say, authentically. But to do so we must first ‘relate’ earnestly to our own selves. To clarify this crucial point and the driving motive behindKierkegaard’s ironic and evocative presentations of the first two modes of existence, I now turn briefly to his image of man:

Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self…. Man is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity…. A man who has no will at all is no self.25

I interpret this enigmatic (almost Hegelian, one might say) text as follows: man is aspiritual self trying to unite contrary tendencies of soul and body, of possibility andnecessity. To exist is to be in the process of becoming one’s self. It means using one’s freedom for selfcreation and self-transcendence, refusing to let the ‘finite’ or the passive elements of our facticity determine who we are. By a conscious and committed ‘relation’ to ourselves and by concentration on creating ourselves we are continually (‘eternally’) becoming authentic individuals. Authenticity, or the quest for it, is, then, the ‘way’ which determines what we really are—indeterminacy. A man who does not ‘will’ or does not accept this perpetual movement towards self-creation dissolves his own self either by not really choosing (the aesthetic predicament) or by choosing a dispassionate part or role inan abstract wholeness (the ethical). Always to have to choose freely and create one’s own self is to be in a constant state of ‘dread’26 or anxiety, but to give up this quest means to be rid of one’s self and to be in despair. And, indeed, every project begins in dread whilethe first two modes of life end in despair. This follows from Kierkegaard’s expositions of the aesthetic and the ethical life-styles from which he wants to liberate us by his ironic indirect communication.

In the first volume of Either/Or Kierkegaard uses the term ‘aesthetic’ in its most comprehensive sense, derived from the Greek aisthesis, which literally means sense-perception and observation. This sphere is that of sensual immediacy and passiveabsorption in external circumstances, where immediate pleasure is sought by employingone’s natural endowments and given conditions. The aesthete avoids decision either through immersion in sensuous inclination or through endless and fruitless reflection. Heis striving not to form his own self, but only to create the right circumstances forintensifying his pleasure from external objects. In this sense he is actually not choosinghis self, but rather using with sophistication the aesthetic element by which ‘he is immediately what he is’: pure natural facticity. In this sphere, therefore, there is no trace of self-creation, and the already-given raw material of one’s senses and inclinations plays the major, or the only, role. From this point of view, the ‘Judge’ who is supposedly the author of the second volume of Either/Or, presenting the ‘ethical sphere’, is right in accusing the aesthete of living negatively by refusing to choose at all, of remainingessentially passive in his aesthetic pursuits.27 Since the aesthetic sphere is characterized by the absence of genuine choice—choice that fundamentally changes and forms one’s self—freedom is not exercised at all and there is no place for authenticity.

The latter is also suppressed by the continued escape from sincere commitment to any potential object that might satisfy the aesthetic urge. This happens because beyond the


constant threat of pain and frustration there is the even greater danger of boredom due tothe unceasing repetition of the same or similar stimuli. Kierkegaard ironically ‘translates’ the first chapters of Genesis in describing this ‘root of all evil’ for the aesthete:

The gods were bored, and so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, and so Eve was created. Thus boredom entered the world, and increased in proportion to the increase of population…. To divert themselves they conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens. This idea is itself as boring as the tower was high…. The nations were scattered over the earth, just as people now travel abroad, but they continued to be bored…. The English are in general the paradigmatic nation.

(Either/Or, I, pp. 282, 286)

As a remedy against boredom Kierkegaard suggests the ‘Rotation Method’ (from which the above passage is taken). This essay is one of the best examples of his irony. The aesthetic mode is reduced to absurdity by his advice to escape the imminent boredom byconstant and ‘prudent’ changes and artificial intensification of aesthetic stimuli. Kierkegaard suggests several principles for the aesthete ‘to find diversion’ and as a way of avoiding commitment: develop the art of forgetting, Nil admirari, ‘keep the enjoyment under control’, ‘never enter into the relation of marriage’, hold ‘fast’ to life of sheer ‘arbitrariness’, and so forth. All these maxims can be summed up as the project ofperpetuating one’s indeterminacy by absolute non-commitment to anything, not even to one’s own self, which is completely dissolved during this process. No genuine choice is made because nothing significant must happen. One’s inherent needs for eternity, transcendence and meaning are repressed but nevertheless demand fulfilment. Theoutcome is a pervasive feeling of estrangement, ‘melancholy’ and ‘despair’. One loses one’s own self in the aesthetic mode of life but cannot get rid of the psychological effects accompanying this loss of self. All this is beautifully though indirectly portrayed inKierkegaard’s ironic descriptions. If being ironic in general means ‘intending to be interpreted as having a meaning different from one’s words’,28 then here we have irony at its best, since Kierkegaard presents the aesthetic sphere from within, as it were, right upto its most extreme manifestations. Behind his romantic portrayal Kierkegaard points tothe hell which looms for any resident of this aesthetic ‘paradise’. This hell, if felt by the reader, freezes any desire to live that kind of life.

The possibility of authenticity in the aesthetic domain is also thwarted by lack of genuine passion. Kierkegaard conceived of strong passion for, or intensive emotionalattachment to, particular objects, as the optimal expression of freedom and authenticity.In the aesthetic sphere, however, this is not the kind of passion that drives one’s actions; there is only ‘the emptiness of a blind and noisy enthusiasm’ (Either/Or, I, p. 286). In this reflective and diluted age it is not passion that holds the reins but ‘apathetic’ and ‘calculating’ feelings.

If, dissatisfied with the aesthetic mode of existence, one ‘leaps’ desperately to the ethical sphere, one is no better off as far as authenticity is concerned. In hisunderstanding of the ethical sphere, Kierkegaard was dependent on Kant’s popular version of moral philosophy. He believed the ethical domain lacked the passion required


for authenticity, that duty swallowed up love. However, the superiority of the ethical to the aesthetic with respect to authenticity—

given the sincerity of intention, free resolution of one’s will, and commitment to one object—is apparent rather than real. Because of its abstractness, universalism andformalism, the ethical depersonalizes the self, suppressing its spontaneous and passionateexpression. The equilibrium or integrity between the conflicting elements of self isshaken. Moreover, the demand for absolute conformity prevents the emergence of theunique individual. Another important reason for the breakdown of the ethical sphere isthe fact that ‘ethics points to ideality as a task and assumes that man is in possession of the conditions requisite for performing it. Thereby ethics develops a contradiction,precisely for the fact that it makes the difficulty and impossibility clear’ (Concept of Dread, p. 15). Since one is unable to enlist the help of passionate commitment to fulfilhigh ethical standards, and because of their very ideality, the ethically oriented individualrecognizes his failure to achieve this goal, ‘goes bankrupt’ and feels guilty. He begins to blame himself and try harder, but to no avail. Despair makes him feel a sinner and heassumes the notion of ‘original sin’. With the notion of sin ‘there has come to the fore a category that lies entirely outside its provinces’ (Stages, p. 430). The individual is now ready to adopt the religious way and try to regain equilibrium between what he ought tobe and what he is, and so to establish inner harmony between his conflicting aspirations.He becomes motivated to assume the quest for authenticity. This is the sense ofKierkegaard’s claim that ‘the ethical sphere is a transitional sphere’, that ‘the religious’ sphere becomes ‘that of fulfilment’ (Dread, p. 17; Stages, p. 430). Kierkegaard’s attitude to ethics is thus essentially a critique of Kant, who argued for the autonomy of ethics.

Without the passion of faith, ethics cannot stand alone. Even the ethical claim foruniversality cannot be validly maintained, for extreme existential situations far exceed thescope of ethics and do not fall under the ethic of honesty and sincerity. One such extremesituation is the case of Abraham, who scandalously (at least to the ethical mind) attempts,on God’s orders, to sacrifice his son Isaac. Kierkegaard’s poetic description of this exception undermines the claim of ethics to universality and ‘freezes’ the willingness of those trying to attain authenticity to follow the ethical code blindly. Kierkegaardconcludes his enticement by presenting us with a case of authentic faith, where theutmost passion enables us to commit ourselves intensely to the formation of our ownselves.

VI

That it is impossible to point to concrete living or dead individuals as authentic figuresdoes not stem solely from the fact that authenticity ‘begins precisely there where’ the ethos of objectivity and rationality leaves off’ (FT, p. 64), taking with it all public criteria of judgement. Kierkegaard holds that it also has to do with the intrinsic nature ofauthenticity, which revolves around the innermost self and the subjective ‘inwardness’ of passion. Outwardly the authentic hero may even look like a ‘tax-collector’, like any


philistine exercising his conventional and ethical modes of living. But inwardly it is adifferent story altogether. Abraham’s self, tested and forged by the dreadful encounterwith the Absolute, acquires a qualitatively new nature. Kierkegaard uses this point toreject ‘the familiar philosophic maxim’ of Hegelian philosophy ‘that the external is the internal, and the internal the external’ (Either/Or, I, p. 3). At one point, Johannes de silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling, characterizes faith as ‘the paradox that inwardness is higher than outwardness’,29 whereas in the ethical sphere, the moral agent’s rational (Kantian) duty is to ‘become revealed’ and to express his subjectivity ‘in an outward way’. While the ethic of honesty is objective, public and transparently manifested, the pathos of authenticity is concealed, radically subjective, andexternalized only rarely, in momentous acts of ‘truthfulness’.

The individual always finds it difficult to be sure of his authenticity. In diametrical opposition to Hegel’s image of man, the knight of faith, renouncing the universal language of reflective thought, cannot become intelligible even to himself. Abraham’, the paradigmatic knight of faith, ‘keeps silent—but he cannot speak’.30 His immediate, faithful and private relation to God makes it impossible for him to speak to Isaac or toanyone else. Kierkegaard interprets the Biblical story as Abraham’s attempt to test his religious commitment by an extraordinary act of faith. Only such an act, analogous tothose in certain extreme situations described by other writers, can attest the authenticityof the believer. In other words, by his determined act to sacrifice his dearest for the sakeof God, Abraham proves to be an authentic believer. This explains why, in an essay onauthenticity in the sense of auctoritas (possessing original or inherent authority),Kierkegaard answers the question of how an Apostle can prove he has authority asfollows: ‘An Apostle has no other proof than his own statement, and at the most, his willingness to suffer anything for the sake of that statement.’ The Apostle, like St Paul, is no ‘genius’, but ‘a simple man’. He cannot prove that he has ‘divine authority’, but it remains his responsibility to see that ‘he produces that impression’. In other words, one cannot prove that one is authentic but one can feel in one’s innermost self the need for authenticity, and thus seek it constantly. This mode of living may shape such apersonality so that by sheer force it conveys its authentic ‘authority’. The latter, unlike genius, is not ‘marked out by natural gifts’, but is formed continuously by one’s own efforts, sufferings and self-overcomings.31

Abraham cannot analyse himself or immerse himself in endless reflection. Because ofhis great passion, he is not paralysed at the moment of truth—or rather of truthfulness. For Kierkegaard the ideas of passion and uncertainty are interrelated; it is the mostuncertain thing that excites our most burning passion. Thus Abraham has to risk thepossibility that it is not God who summons him to sacrifice Isaac, but Satan, or anunconscious urge, or a delusion. After all, Abraham’s decision to sacrifice Isaac might be a horrible temptation, what Kierkegaard terms an Anfechtung in several places.32 This is the ‘dread’ that makes Abraham choose the quest of authentic faith. Here, not reflection, but only action, can attest to the self’s authenticity. The act in which ‘the knife glittered’ was the act of infinite and absurd faith that caused Abraham to believe deeply ‘that God who requires it of him should the next instant recall the requirement’.

According to ethical standards sanctioned by society, the universal always takesprecedence over the particular.33 Yet the paradox of faith is that the particular becomes


higher than the universal by virtue of its passionate relation to the Absolute. Even themurder of one’s son can be a holy act, if done at the behest of God. Faith is a passion which begins at the point where reason ceases to operate; it means believing the absurd,contrary to all rational, earthly calculations. Because it is a relationship between the finiteand the infinite, between the ephemeral and the absolute, it supersedes all else. The‘absolute duty’ to God (who, by virtue of being Absolute, is not bound by morality)renders all other ethical obligations relative. Thus, after despairing of the ‘ethical sphere’, when we realize our inability to live up to the abstract and categorical demands ofmorality—this realization being sparked by Kierkegaard’s description of the ethical sphere—and after Kierkegaard has managed to uncover our repressed passion, we arepsychologically ready for the final stage of his enticement to ‘leap into’ the authenticity of faith. But are we ready, for the sake of our authenticity, to perform the ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’ and behave like Abraham, who ‘by his act…overstepped the ethical entirely’ (FT, p. 69)?

Thus it seems that the first modern philosopher of authenticity was willing to involve us in a serious clash between this authenticity and ethics. His version of the story ofAbraham suggests that the road to authenticity may even pass beyond rationalcommunication and the ethos of honesty. But to attain authentic life we should nothesitate to enter this zone even at the terrible price of crucifying our understanding. It ispossible to argue against Kierkegaard that if the crucial factor in authenticity is the ‘how’ of passion, does it not follow that on his view it is better to be a zealous Nazi than alukewarm Christian? Is Abraham the highly esteemed knight of faith or just a zealousmurderer? If an authentic mode of living requires an individual’s total and passionate commitment and uncompromising rejection of anything that is alien or contradictory to it,could it be that a passionate Nazi or religious fanatic is to be regarded as an authenticsubject and deserving our highest esteem? Such questions were directed to Kierkegaardby various unsympathetic critics. Using my presentation of his position, I think a partialdefence against such attacks can be mounted.

As we saw, Kierkegaard holds that authenticity is formed by a kind of correlationbetween the ‘what’ of commitment and the ‘how’ of committing oneself. Kierkegaard seems to think that any idée fixe or ideology directed towards a finite and limited object,such as the thousand-year Reich, cannot in principle incite the ‘endless passion’ required for acting authentically. Only an infinite and absolute object or paradox can evoke therequired absolute passion. Our authenticity may emerge only through the ‘suspension’ of reason and logic. But for this we need an object, like that of Christian faith, which willdemand that we do exactly that, namely, bracket out our morality codes.

However, one may object and argue that, psychologically at least, it is still plausiblethat even a finite object, such as my love for a woman, can incite me to such a degree ofpassion that I may sacrifice everything to preserve my absolute commitment to her. Andindeed Kierkegaard describes love in terms similar to those he uses for faith, saying:‘Love is a passion whose pathos is immediate’ (CUP, p. 345). It seems that there is no obstacle to becoming passionately committed to a contingent and finite object, whom Imay love just as authentically as I may believe in the Absolute. Why, then, is it only theAbsolute God who has the capacity to overwhelm me so passionately that my faith in himis the only genuine expression of an authentic commitment?


One possible answer to this question, which will perhaps be regarded as scandalous bybelievers in any version of a transcendent God, is that this kind of faith is an expressionof the ultimate paradox and requires man’s most sustained creativity. To create Godrequires the utmost passion possible of man. I do not refer here to an actual creation butto the intentional constitution of the relation to an object which by this very relationbecomes the Absolute. In his story of Abraham, Kierkegaard implies that the existentialexperience, which makes the ‘knight of faith’ affirm the command subjectively and regard it as coming from God, grants this God the status of being an absolute entity forAbraham. In order for the Absolute to become an Absolute for me and to demand of me‘an absolute duty’, this Absolute is completely dependent upon my subjectiveinterpretation of him as the Absolute. Here we reach the climax of the paradox: despiteAbraham’s awareness that the Absolute is dependent upon his decision to make him so, afact that may destroy the immediate relation towards him, Abraham acts as if thisAbsolute has an objective authority to be the Absolute! Though the Absolute dependsupon one’s subjective decision, one has to accept him, as does Abraham, as if he is theobjective Absolute per se. Thus God is intentionally created in our hearts, though we obey him as ontologically aloof, in heaven.

Kierkegaard maximizes and sharpens the distinction between man and God in order tomake religious faith the most authentic and authoritative thing imaginable. The gapbetween God and man is infinite because it is man who made it, creating religions oftranscendence. We should remember that both Abraham and Jesus were founders andoriginators of specific faiths, and since originality is part of the meaning of authenticity,both may legitimately be regarded, as indeed they are, as authentic ‘knights of faith’. Whereas the most passionate lover is only forming passion in his inwardness anddirecting it to an already existing individual, the ‘knight of faith’ creates first the object of his faith and then the passion involved in the faithful commitment to this object. Thus theintimate correlation between the ‘how’ of faith and its ‘what’ is entirely of his making. Therefore it is only this formative relation that can create the self’s authenticity. To create one’s own self, one must first overcome one’s sensual nature (aesthetics), then universal reason; only then can one become what one intrinsically is: the sole creator of one’s self and God. For this the utmost passion, commitment and self-overcoming are needed. One must be deeply immersed in the search for authenticity. In ethics we have a similar‘what/how’ correlation but, because of the abstractness of its objects and the amount of rational reflection involved, passion evaporates and the subject cannot become trulycommitted to the object of his creation.

But is not the correlation between object and subject a relic of traditional rationalism?It seems that in the most radical subjectivism we still find some residue of rationalobjectivity. But does this diminish the thrust or the revolt of authenticity against the ethicof objectivity?

And, in the final analysis, why is it valuable to be ‘a truly existent individual’? Why is it better to suffer the agony and dread of authenticity than to be secure in the comfort ofconventional public values such as, for example, honesty? Kierkegaard does not pose thisquestion and does not feel discomfort about both denying any ultimate criterion forevaluation and positing authenticity as a value according to which actions are to bemeasured.


Notes

1 The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. and trans. A.Dru (London: Oxford University Press,1938), (henceforth Dru), p. 15. Following Kierkegaard, I use ‘individual’, ‘subjectivity’, ‘spirit’, ‘inwardness’ and ‘authenticity’ interchangeably in this chapter.

2 Ibid., p. 16. 3 Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. H.V.Hong and E.H.Hong

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967) (henceforth Hong), vol. I, p. 331. 4 The Point of View for My Work as an Author: A Report to History, trans. W.Lowrie, ed.

B.Nelson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962) (henceforth PV), pp. 5–6. 5 This was also perceptively observed by M.C.Taylor, Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous

Authorship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 5, and implied in Jean Wahl,Études Kierkegaardiennes (Paris: Aubier, 1938), esp. pp. 257–62.

6 For helpful summaries of various psychological and physiological analyses of Kierkegaard,see A.Henriksen, Methods and Results of Kierkegaard Studies in Scandinavia: A Historicaland Critical Study (Copenhagen, 1951), pp. 66–128; M.Grimault, La Melancholie de Kierkegaard (Paris, 1965); H.Fenger, Kierkegaard: The Myths and their Origins, trans. G.C.Schoolfield (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 62–80. Against the reductive tendency, see the classic essay of T.Haecker, Kierkegaard the Cripple, trans. C.Van O. Bruyn (London: Harvill, 1948).

7 J.Thompson, The Lonely Labyrinth: Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Works (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois Press, 1967), p. xiii.

8 In the journals we can sense a gradually growing identification of the maturing young manwith Christianity. At the beginning (1838) he asserts: ‘I mean to labour to achieve a far more inward relation to Christianity; hitherto I have fought for its truth while in a sense standingoutside it’ (Dru, p. 59). A short time later, in 1839, Kierkegaard admits to ‘having wasted the strength and courage of his youth in rebellion against Him’ (ibid., p. 73). In 1848 and 1849, when he had reached religious maturity and stopped using pseudonyms, he statedunqualifiedly: “The relation to God is the only thing that lends significance’ (ibid., p. 241); ‘I delineate Christianity…and consider that to be, quiet literally, my calling, to which I havebeen led in the most curious way from my earliest years’ (ibid., p. 333).

9 Dru, p. 258; cf. another passage: ‘The wrong path lies all too near, the wish to reform andawaken the whole world…instead of one’s self’ (ibid., p. 319).

10 PV, p. 12. The article mentioned is ‘The Crisis and a Crisis in an Actress’s Life’ published in the July 1848 issue of the Danish journal The Fatherland.

11 ‘The Present Age’ and ‘Of the Difference between a Genius and an Apostle’, trans. A.Dru (New York: Harper & Row, 1962) (henceforth PA), p. 33. The same point is already made byKierkegaard in the ‘Diapsalmata’ of the early (1843) Either/Or: ‘Let others complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is paltry; for it lacks passion. Men’s thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace, they are themselves pitiable like the lacemakers’ (vol. I, trans. D.F. and L.M.Swenson (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959), p. 27). Cf. his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D.F.Swenson and W.Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1941) (henceforth CUP), p. 345.

12 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. W.Kaufmann (New York: Random House,


1967), p. 60. This is especially true, Nietzsche says, of Hamlet. 13 This formula came to my mind after reading Kierkegaard’s admonition that his age ‘being

without passion has lost all feeling for enthusiasm and sincerity’ (PA, p. 39). 14 See, e.g., his Attack upon ‘Christendom’, trans. W.Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1944). 15 CUP, first page following the end of the text. Kierkegaard’s instruction to his printer to print

this appendix without numeration was kept to the letter (and the number) in the Englishtranslation.

16 CUP, pp. 72, 68, 68n., 236, 245n. Cf. J.Rée, Philosophical Tales (London: Methuen, 1987), pp. 114–20.

17 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, ed. and trans. D. F.Pears and B.F.McGuinness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), p. 151, proposition 6.522. Seealso M.P.Gallagher, ‘Wittgenstein’s Admiration for Kierkegaard’, Month, 29 (January, 1968), 43–9. It seems very likely (see P.Gardiner, Kierkegaard (London: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 115) that the following remark made by Wittgenstein refers to Kierkegaard:‘An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he werewalking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really ispossible to walk on it’ (Culture and Value, trans. P.Winch (London: Oxford University Press,1980), p. 73).

18 CUP, p. 236, and chapter II of Part Two, pp. 169–224. Since almost every work on Kierkegaard deals with his polemic against Hegel, I will not dwell on it here, especially as itis only one part of his critique of the ‘present age’.

19 The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to Socrates, trans. L.M. Capel (New York: Harper & Row, 1965) (henceforth CI).

20 CI, p. 338. And see the last thesis (XV), where he formulates this idea as follows: ‘As philosophy begins with doubt, so also that life which may be called worthy of man beginswith irony’ (p. 349).

21 CI, p. 190. In this dissertation, Kierkegaard uses Hegel’s famous distinction between objective morality or Sittlichkeit and subjective morality or Moralität (individual conscience).

22 A concise outline is provided in CUP, pp. 261–5, and a more elaborate and poetic presentation in Stages on Life’s Way, trans. W.Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1940).

23 See J.Collins, The Mind of Kierkegaard (London: Secker & Warburg, 1954), p. 46; andTaylor, Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Authorship, p. 74. Taylor also provides an informativeexposition of the basic ways in which the stages have been understood by commentators (pp.62–77).

24 A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. Robert Bretall (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1946), p. 271. Cf. Kierkegaard’s ‘poetic’ description of himself as an individual whose‘purity of heart was to will only one thing’ (PV, p. 103).

25 ‘The Sickness unto Death’ and ‘Fear and Trembling’, trans. W.Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954), pp. 146, 162. (Fear and Trembling is henceforth referred to as FT.) Cf. the following pas-sage from his journals: ‘It is not true of the human race, as it is with animals, that each individual is only a particular instance or copy. The person whoreally becomes spirit, for which he is intended, at some point takes over his entire being (by“choosing himself”, as it is called in Either/Or)’ (Hong, p. 31)- Interestingly enough, the motto for the first volume of Either/Or is taken from Edward Young, the eighteenth-century poet who asked the essential question regarding authenticity: ‘Born Originals, how comes it


to pass that we die Copies?’ 26 The Concept of Dread, trans. W.Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1944),

pp. 139–45. 27 For the quotations above, see Either/Or, vol. II, trans. W.Lowrie, p. 182. For the Judge’s

arguments, see ibid., pp. 170–82, 215–20. 28 Cf. Rée, Philosophical Tales, p. 27. 29 FT, p. 79. Kierkegaard is not very consistent in his distinction between ‘paradox’ and

‘absurd’, but he hints at the following difference: whereas ‘absurd’ describes actions or behaviours performed in a context devoid of any rational reason or justification, ‘paradox’ portrays a situation of conflict between two or more accepted modes of life, theoreticaldoctrines and sets of values, each containing its own principles. Cf. Kierkegaard’s own statement: ‘That there is a difference between the absurd in Fear and Trembling and the paradox in Concluding Unscientific Postscript is quite correct. The first is purely personaldefinition of existential faith—the other is faith in relationship to a doctrine’ (Hong, vol. I, p. 8).

30 FT, p. 122. This fundamental loneliness of Abraham is also present in another fictional heroof authenticity—Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.

31 ‘Of the Difference between a Genius and an Apostle’, (see n. 11 above), pp. 105, 93–4. 32 E.g. FT, pp. 79, 124. This notion of negative enticement is analogous, as we shall see in the

next chapter, to Nietzsche’s concept of Verführung. 33 Interestingly, Kant, who worked out in detail a conception of religious life ‘within the limits

of Reason’ and ethics ‘alone’, considers this same issue, namely, whether or not a fathercould be ‘ordered’ by God ‘to kill his son who is, so far as he knows, perfectly innocent’. He concludes that since the moral law, being universal, cannot grant any exception to itsmaxims, and since such a command contradicts morality, it ‘cannot, despite all appearances, be of God’ (Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. T.M.Green and H.H.Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), p. 82). See the reference to the Abraham-Isaac story on p. 175. This view is rejected by Kierkegaard as too easy a way out of the paradox of faith.


4 Nietzsche’s pathos of

authenticity

Nietzsche did not use the term ‘authenticity’ explicitly, but it is possible to locate itsorigin in his recurrent distinctions between Wahrheit (truth) and Wahrhaftigkeit(truthfulness): ‘a proof of truth is not the same thing as a proof of truthfulness…the latter is in no way an argument for the former’.1 This notion of Wahrhaftigkeit is virtually a synonym of the Heideggerian term eigentlich and of what in the later existentialist literature is called authentic. Since there is no necessary logical connection between truthand truthfulness, Nietzsche could admire Schopenhauer and Socrates while rejecting theirdoctrines. The shift from philosophy to philosophers, and that from the traditionalmeaning of truth to personal authenticity, show up repeatedly in Nietzsche’s treatment of the history of philosophy. In his lectures on the Presocratics he declares: ‘The only thing of interest in a refuted system is the personal element. It alone is what is foreverirrefutable.’2

One of the basic intuitions of Nietzsche’s thought is the concept of completeimmanence, formulated in sections 108–25 of The Gay Science. Transcendental entities or supra-natural powers do not exist; there is no ‘pure reason’, no other world, no domain different from or superior to our own. After the ‘Death of God’ one has to adopt for oneself the God-like role of being the originator of truth and of one’s own self. The absence of a ‘pre-established harmony’ between our cognitions and reality permits us toshift our emphasis to the creation of our own genuine selves.

We can attain ‘truthfulness’ only if we accept life in all its harshness and its completeimmanency. If an individual is prevented from genuinely creating and expressing his self,a deepening alienation develops between him, his ‘civilized’ acts and his civilization. This is, then, the positive task of Nietzsche’s philosophy: to assist us in overcomingculture’s repression and entice us into uncovering and reactivating our own creative powers.3

Nietzsche rejects the entire philosophical tradition of rationalism and the ethos ofhonesty and sincerity from Descartes onwards. But it would be a mistake to suggest thathe is pre-eminently an anti-rationalist who wishes to suppress all knowledge and reflection in favour of a ‘return to nature’. The rational-Apollonian principle of self-knowledge, first described by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, is also an integral part of his thought on authenticity. An individual’s life comprises a boundless number ofexperiences and notions, including a tremendous burden of superfluous information.


Through awareness of one’s authentic needs one may organize and refine this chaos intoa harmonious, sublimated whole. Initially, the self is a bundle of conflicting desires andan array of contradictory possibilities. The self’s unity is a function of its own decisionsand creations.

It appears that two seemingly contradictory models of authenticity are in Nietzsche’s thought. The first model (whose historical roots are, perhaps, to be found in Rousseau)derives its inspiration from the biological metaphor of a plant actualizing the potential ofthe seed. It assumes the individualistic thesis, namely, that ‘every man is a unique miracle’,4 a unique aggregate of drives and wishes. One becomes authentic, according tothis model, if one manages to manifest this complex fully in one’s lifetime. The second model employs the metaphor of art and artistic creation. The search for authenticity isseen as the wish to reflect one’s own indeterminacy by spontaneous choice of one out of the many possible ways of life. The individual is a kind of artist who freely shapes hisself as a work of art.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that Nietzsche embraced these two models equally. The second conception, that of artistic creation, is surely primary. Nietzscherejects crude naturalism and determinism and does not believe that the innateness ofone’s individualistic nature completely determines one’s self. Nietzsche is less concerned with biological nature and more with cultural conditioning and formative influenceswhich blindly shape one’s character. To become ‘what we are’ is not to live according to our so-called ‘innate nature’, but to create ourselves freely. To that end we have to knowourselves to distinguish what we can change in ourselves and in the externalcircumstances that have shaped us; we must realize what we have to accept as inevitable,and must do so in the heroic manner of amor fati (love of fate).5 The concept of self-overcoming (Selbstüberwindung), which is central to Nietzsche’s thought, would become meaningless were the biological model really dominant.

The notion of self-overcoming is the key to the meaning of the will to power, a pivotal notion in Nietzsche. This is illustrated in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where Nietzsche discusses the will to power in terms of the unceasing will to overcome one’s self. The will to be rid of the superfluous elements of one’s character and culture indicates spiritual maturity. If one were to ask Nietzsche the purpose of this self-over-coming, his answer would be, to attain maturity, authenticity and power. In this respect the will to power is ofa piece with the quest for authenticity—the will to become the free author of one’s own self. The optimal will to power is expressed by the ideally authentic Übermensch. If this will is diminished in quality, the tendency to escape from the task of creating one’s self and to identify with the ‘herd’ will intensify. One endowed with a will to power of higher quality and greater vitality will manifest the ‘master morality’ and authentic life patterns, in contrast to the ‘slave morality’ typical of those possessing lesser power (Macht). The latter, however, may be endowed with greater physical force (Kraft). Nietzsche’s distinction between Kraft and Macht, which cannot be elaborated here,6 represents his philosophical emphasis on the transition from sheer physical force and brutal violence(Gewalt) to spiritual-creative power which is necessary if one is to attain authenticity.

Nietzsche’s pathos of authenticity 47

I

Nietzsche’s use of an artistic model of authenticity begins in The Birth of Tragedy(1872), where he delineates an ‘Apollonian principle’ which exercises its drives in direct opposition to the ‘Dionysian barbarian’ instincts. It does this through the creation of sophisticated images, and the imposition of order and a causal network on to the world.

The subjugation by Apollo of the unrestrained drives of the Dionysian barbarian is the source of art in general. This synthesis provides ‘the metaphysical comfort’ which allows man to affirm existence despite its horrors. By this process, through which man ispurified of his cruder components, he himself is transformed into an object of art, into anartistic sublimation: ‘He is no longer an artist’, Nietzsche tells us, ‘he has become a work of art.’7 This, in fact, is the image of the authentic individual who individualizes andcreates himself. In this act of creation, creator and creation merge; and any possiblealienation between man and his created objects is overcome, since these objects becomean integral part of his own self. For Nietzsche, the work of art is a product of thetransforming of man’s drives. It is this sublimation by art, this artistic mode of being in the world, that enables one to remain oneself and continue to live. Art protects man fromthe fear of existence and the struggle with absurd reality, without repressing hisinstinctual Dionysian elements. On the contrary, art allows them to be manifested bytransforming the world into an ‘aesthetic phenomenon’, rendering it enjoyable in spite of its inherent pain.

One Apollonian principle, expressed in the command ‘know thyself’, is self-consciousness. This means knowing one’s own instinctual desires, being aware of one’s hidden wishes and of one’s genuine, Dionysian character. At the same time it recommends coming to terms and living with them in a well-functioning and authentic manner. The really powerful person, though cognizant of sickness, affirms life andhealth. Apollonian culture recognizes only the rational principle in nature and in its owncreations. It therefore perpetuates an illusion regarding its true origins. This illusionprevented the Greeks from attaining authentic existence. For this reason, Nietzscheultimately rejects the purely aesthetic solution and corrects it by proposing a concept ofexistence stripped of veils and self-deceptions. This attitude is characteristic of the Übermensch; it leads to the acquisition of profound self-knowledge by destroying our various rationalizations through a process of ‘unmasking’.

The process of attaining authenticity by unmasking begins to emerge in Nietzsche’s ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’, where he claims that human nature is ‘a thing dark and veiled’ (SE, p. 129). Although potentially creative and powerful, man is afraid of expressing himself freely, fully and uniquely, and hides behind various dogmas. Hetypically prefers empty generalizations to his own remarkable particularity. Thismotivates Nietzsche’s unmasking method, which attempts to free human individuality from such masks. Unmasking functions as a vehicle of authentic existence by exposingthe individual’s dependence on external conditioning and internal deception.


A critical challenge to Nietzsche’s pursuit of the authentic personality is that of gaining access to the innermost self—the ‘veiled’ self carefully guarded by a complex of psychological defences. Suspecting the reliability of introspection, Nietzsche prefers amore indirect course, the investigation of exemplary figures and models which allow the development of self-identity through assimilation:

Let the youthful soul look back on life with the question: what have you truly loved up to now, what has drawn your soul aloft, what has mastered it and at the same time blessed it? Set up these revered objects before you and perhaps their nature…will give you a law, the fundamental law of your own true self.

(SE, p. 129)

We are at liberty to shape our identity and ideals by freely choosing our educators; indeedour ‘educators can be only our liberators’ (SE, p. 129). This freedom makes us responsible for our characters just as artists are responsible for their creations. The path tothis creation of an authentic self follows the leads of one’s educators. By subjecting our intuitive admiration for exemplary figures to self-analysis, we come to realize what we genuinely value and who we really are. Nietzsche is not propounding an ‘ethics of self-realization’.8 This ill-chosen term distorts Nietzsche’s view, since it presupposes a given personal self and clearly rests on the biological model of authenticity. Nietzsche,however, makes it clear that becoming one’s true self is a perpetual movement of self-overcoming, a free creation of one’s own perspectives.

Nietzsche is well aware of the strong pressure exerted by social convention andeducational systems. Hence the road to authenticity and spontaneous creativity requiresthe two stages described by Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: ‘the spirit becomes a camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child’.9 The individual (‘the lion‘) must liberate himself from ‘the camel’, i.e. from all the external layers imposed on him by institutionalconditioning. Only then, after attaining a childlike state of ‘innocence’ (Z, p. 139), can he proceed to the second stage, in which he consciously adopts and assimilates moral norms.These norms may well reflect the traditional values discarded in the first stage; it is nottheir content that matters, but the unconstrained manner in which they are adopted.

II

Nietzsche’s philosophy and the literary means he employs to present it are meant to lurehis readers into joining the search for authenticity.

This is the only alternative left after the ‘death of God’; the ability to embrace this alternative is indicative of the ‘free spirit par excellence’. Like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche presents the ‘coming generations’ with the ‘terrifying Either/Or: “Either abolish your reverences or—yourselves!”’10

Nietzsche’s ultimate objective, then, is to make possible a creative and authentic life in a world without dogmatic beliefs. The death of dogma will not lead to the disintegration


of one’s self, but rather will liberate one’s creative resources, repressed until now bymorality. It will open new horizons to new beliefs, but these will function solely as life-enhancing and self-crystallizing ‘perspectives’. Once they have lost their usefulness, suchbeliefs will be discarded and replaced by other perspectives.

Hence, Nietzsche’s philosophy is to be regarded as a means: ‘a mere instrument’ to entice us to form our authenticity. In view of this, Nietzsche is one of these ‘philosophers of the future’ who may have a right to be called ‘tempters’ (Versucher). The appropriate aphorism concludes with the words: ‘This name itself is in the end a mere experiment,and if you will, an enticement.’11 Nietzsche’s play on the words Versuch (hypothesis or experiment) and Versuchung (temptation or enticement) points to one of the mostsignificant features of his philosophy, namely, that it is a sophisticated mode ofenticement. Nietzsche speaks of the nature of this ‘enticement’ in terms of an ‘experiment’ that directs one’s efforts toward one’s own power and tests one’s ability to reach and activate it in one’s life (BGE, sec. 41).

Nietzsche distinguishes between the positive enticement to authentic pathos—the Versuchung—and the negative seduction (used, e.g. by Christianity), which he callsVerführung.12 This distinction is one reason why Nietzsche calls himself the ‘Anti-Christ’. He is like the early Christians insofar as he uses the same tactics of enticement asthey used to attract mankind to ‘negative’ ideals. But Nietzsche is also their opponentsince against the Christian gospel of salvation from the hardship of life he posits itsantithesis: salvation from this negative salvation by incitement to create an authentic self.

Nietzsche is aware that his enticement is not for everyone and sees different reactionsto it as indicating different types of power:

What serves the higher type of men as nourishment…must almost be poison for a very different and inferior type…. There are books

that have opposite values for soul and health, depending on whether the lower soul, the lower vitality, or the higher and more vigorous ones turn to them: in the former case, these books are dangerous and lead to crumbling and disintegration; in the latter, herald’s cries that call the bravest to their courage.

(BGE, pp. 42–3)

Three kinds of responses to Nietzsche’s challenge are implied in this passage: the ‘inferior type’ of disintegrated and inauthentic self is confused and escapes from the burdensome ‘self-overcoming’ it entails; the ‘higher type’ of adequate, genuine self accepts it and becomes more powerful and independent; the authentic Übermensch does not respond to this enticement since he does not require it. Such avoidance of Nietzsche’s challenge does not stem here from weakness of the will but from a surplus of power.

This view of Nietzsche’s writing as a means for the enticement of the reader mayexplain its peculiar nature. Nietzsche intended his books for the few who would reallyunderstand and benefit from them. They aim to shock and attract us, softening andreducing our resistance. It is not by accident that in several places Nietzsche insists on theclose connection between his goal as a philosophical Versucher and his peculiar literary style.13 ‘Whatever is profound loves masks’, declares Nietzsche, and whatever forms one’s self loves the enticing and ironic mask behind which lies ‘so much graciousness in


cunning’ (BGE, pp. 50, 51). Nietzsche’s enticing literature then becomes ‘the path to the fundamental problems’ (ibid., p. 32). However, being only a path, it is naturally abandoned once it comes to an end. Nietzschean philosophy becomes, then, a sort oftemporary scaffolding, or provisional ‘hypothesis’. It is a metaphoric structure in the original meaning of the term meta-phora (change of form), to be abandoned once it has served its purpose. Wittgenstein’s well-known analogy from the penultimate sentence ofthe Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is similar to Nietzsche’s conception of philosophy here: ‘one may well want to look out over the topmost rung of the ladder, but one ought not want to stand on it’.14

III

Nietzsche’s ladder does not create the self and postulate its powerful patterns ex nihilo; it merely explicates them and calls for their crystallization and re-activation. This is the main meaning of Nietzsche’s focal statement that the philosopher’s ‘thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a recognition, a remembering, a return and a homecoming to aremote, primordial, and inclusive household of the soul’ (BGE, sec. 20). This motif of a return or homecoming to some previous genuine state of the self is characteristic of manythinkers on authenticity. Kierkegaard, for example, expressed it by an attempt to incitereaders to return to the original sources of the early Christians.

In any case, Nietzsche’s teaching on power is not an induction or an experimental hypothesis. Apart from the method of unmasking, it clearly contains an explicative andtypological dimension, in contrast to the constructive and explanatory aspect of theempirical sciences. This dimension is expressed in Nietzsche’s descriptions of the different patterns of power and in his distinction between its two central manifestations:the positive, which I take to be the authentic, and the negative, or inauthentic.

Negative power, or inauthenticity, is symptomatic of a weak self, lacking in power butincessantly attempting to obtain it:

There are recipes for the feeling of power, firstly for those who can control themselves and who are thereby accustomed to a feeling of power; then for those in whom precisely this is lacking.

(D, sec. 65)

Clearly, no positive power is exhibited in the satisfaction derived from abusing anddominating one’s fellow-beings. The negative power of one with a feeble sense of selfhood expresses itself not spontaneously but derivatively. It is fundamentally deficient,and hopelessly strives to encourage and fortify itself by means of abuse, cruelty and the‘drive to distinction’ (ibid., sec. 30). By contrast, one who possesses genuinely positivepower, the really authentic self, needs neither the approbation of his surroundings nor themedals and titles that allegedly attest this power; nor does such a self require the variouspleasures stemming from abusive domination in order to intensify the ‘feeling of


power’—for it is already intrinsically a part of him. This is the man who ‘becomes what he is’ without deviously manipulating his surroundings or deriving his sense of potency and selfhood from transcendental ideologies or political banners.

Nietzsche portrays in detail the cunning, devious mechanisms by which people ofnegative power reinforce and affirm their selves. One such strategy is to establish themorality of duty, thus assuming a sovereignty over other individuals. Certain ‘rights’ are granted, but in return for these rights people are required to accept certain duties and toconcede others’ rights in return. Thus all are trapped in a network of duties and rights which eventually strengthens the defective powers of persons subscribing to themoralities of duty.

Nietzsche’s elaborate criticism of the current ethic can be constructive only if guided by a regulative idea of an alternative moral pattern. He does not posit power againstmorality, but proposes an active morality of positive power that expresses courageouscreativity. He contrasts the characteristic features of these two moralities: ‘All actions may be traced back to evaluations, all evaluations are either original or adopted—the latter being by far the most common’ (D, sec. 104, p. 60). Nietzsche maintains that the main reason for the latter is moral cowardice (D, sec. 101), which shuns the authenticexpression of intrinsic power. The mechanisms for adopting traditional morality includeblind internalization of external maxims, making them into habit, the ‘second nature’ of a ‘camel’. This given, habitual ethic, conditioned in childhood (D, sec. 104), stands incontrast to the creative and authentic evaluations made by a mature selfhood.

Nietzsche, however, in explicating various moral phenomena, was not searching fornew, esoteric values; he sought to re-activate authentic modes of living. This can easily be seen by looking at some of the descriptions of positive power in his writings. We donot find any original or new values there, but rather values that have already appeared intraditional philosophical ethics: self-sufficiency, heroism, creative sublimation of instinct,intellectual tolerance, generosity, nobility, courage, vitality, self-control, faith in oneself, the ability to accept contradiction, the lack of bad conscience, and the like. Most of thesevalues can be found in the ethics of Plato, Spinoza and Kant, to all of which Nietzschefrequently refers. (By the term ‘ethics’ I mean a doctrine aiming at a rational justificationof moral norms.) However, like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche did not believe that we arecapable of providing any such rational foundation. This is especially the case with hisideal of authenticity which reigns supreme ‘beyond the good and the evil’—beyond the ethos of sincerity and objectivity. This, of course, raises the question: why should we prefer authenticity to negative power, if neither can be transcendently justified? Whyshould we prefer the authentic Übermensch to the ordinary man? Or, to put it directly:why be a moral agent at all?

Nietzsche was aware of this meta-ethical question, which he called ‘the problem of morality itself’ (BGE, sec. 186). Like Kierkegaard’s Abraham, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra could not provide a rational answer to this question. He could only repeat the ‘terrifying Either/Or: “Either abolish your reverences or—yourselves!”’; these ‘reverences‘ are our convenient clinging to the prevailing ethic, which has lost any existential appeal. Thedissolution of our selves, however, ‘would be nihilism’ (GS, sec. 346, p. 287), and Nietzsche encourages us to will, to create or actualize our authentic selfhoods simplybecause it would be spiritual suicide to do otherwise.


The wish to meet the challenge of authenticity must already be implicit, and it is the task of Nietzschean enticement to intensify it. There is thus no contradiction between thefact that Nietzsche gives no esoteric prescriptions, and his calling on us to live creativelyand originally. Originality, Nietzsche believes, springs from the inherent sources of theself and lies in the manner in which it operates, not in its external manifestations. OnNietzsche’s view, his own originality is not exercised by founding a new and unique setof moral values, but, rather, by elucidating already existing values and by giving themnew names. ‘What is originality?’ Nietzsche asks, and answers: ‘To see something that has no name as yet and hence cannot be mentioned although it stares us all in theface’ (GS, sec. 261). Such is the notion of authenticity or Wahrhaftigkeit that he attempts to confront us with so that we adopt its patterns.

By enticing us to create our own selves, Nietzsche strives to assist us to overcome theimpediments that have hitherto inhibited us. Nietzsche assumes that the mental powers tocreate our selves are deeply rooted in us, but because of various psychological handicaps,such as cowardice, we have repressed them. These handicaps have been projected as anideological network, and Nietzsche uses his unmasking ‘hammer’ to shatter such repressive ‘idols’, to overcome them while freezing our faith in them.15

There is a striking similarity between Nietzsche’s tactic of ‘coolly placing on ice’ (EH, p. 284) and Socrates’ aporia. Socrates seeks to freeze the listener’s belief in x, for example, by showing him that this logically entails a belief in y. The listener is not ready to endorse belief in y because of his belief in the set of values, p, s, t…which are incompatible with belief in y. Nietzsche employs almost the same procedure. He shows his readers, by means of psychological and genealogical unmasking, that the effects oftheir inauthenticity include stagnation, inhibition of creativity, depression and, above all,dissolution of their selves—effects most of us consider undesirable. The enticing thrust of authenticity, therefore, is not, and cannot be, presented directly and prescriptively.Rather, the indirect process of ‘freezing’ is employed, showing that the prevalent normsoriginate inauthentically and that the effects of our blindly accepting them are harmful toour selves.

IV

In Nietzsche the genealogical method is also designed to explain why the Übermensch is ‘Utopia’ (nowhere). What accounts for the historical supremacy of the ‘slave morality’ over the ‘masters’ who exhibit genuine power and superior authentic moral capacity? Nietzsche himself declared that he wrote On the Genealogy of Morals to deal with this very issue. The third essay in this work answers ‘the question whence the ascetic ideal,the priests’ ideal, derives its tremendous power although it is the harmful ideal par excellence, a will to the end, an ideal of decadence’ (EH, p. 312; cf. GM, Preface, sec. 6).

Nietzsche’s descriptive analyses have shown that ‘Morality in Europe today is herd animal morality…beside which, and after which many other types, above all highermoralities, are, or ought to be, possible’ (BGE, p. 115). Nietzsche’s moral philosophy is


meant to incite revolution in the realm of human conduct by arousing our thirst forauthentic selfhood. Hence he abandons the explicative approach and adopts thegenealogical method. He does not merely wish to ‘freeze’ completely the declining prevailing ethic, but also to find suitable conditions for the formation of authenticity.Nietzsche is convinced that understanding the historical-psychological circumstances that nurture ‘herd’ morality will help us grasp the conditions required for establishing authentic patterns. His lengthy answer to the question raised above can be summed up asfollows: it is not some inherent flaw in the ideal of authenticity that prevents itspredominance, but rather the relative strength of the opposing patterns, arising fromnegative power, and ensuring their victory.

Nietzsche’s genealogy also attempts to examine the most important question concerning authenticity, namely, whether the Übermensch can in principle develop and live in society as such. Granted his emphasis upon the immanence, autarchy and extremeindividuality of authentic power, is it compatible with morality? Since Nietzsche affirms‘a community’ (see, e.g., GM, second essay, sec. 9) and does not seek to destroy it, hemust explain how the morality of authenticity is at all possible within the social contextand analyse the nature of the interaction among its members. This is what he does in hisgenealogical inquiry, where he maintains that genuine justice is possible only within asocial fabric composed of equally powerful members (ibid., sec. 8). He declares thatrecognition of the value and freedom of others originates in egoism (BGE, sec. 264). Only an individual who possesses an abundance of positive power and firm authenticselfhood is able to grant similar rights and freedoms to all those whom he recognizes ashis equals. He is not afraid that this might diminish or destroy his own authentic power. Itis the self-affirmation of one’s power and virtues that psychologically enables (but, ofcourse, does not necessitate) the affirmation of the other and his authenticity. Human egoism and emphasis on authenticity do not contradict the moral order; indeed, Nietzschethinks, they create the conditions for its proper functioning.

Moreover, if we are not convinced by this argument, the genealogical account alsoattempts to show that the moral patterns of positive Macht were occasionally manifested within some social and historical context. Witness his remarks about ‘an ancient Greek polis, or Venice’ and his references to Rome and the Renaissance.16 He also shows that external factors were responsible for their disappearance. Historical testimony thus seemsto show that there is no essential contradiction between Nietzsche’s morality of authenticity and social reality; in principle the path to their mutual reconciliation remainsopen.

V

Alas, the story is far more complicated. Authenticity denotes, among other things, a stateof integrity between the innermost self and its external manifestations, whatever theirform and content. As we know from Kierkegaard, it is a subjective pathos of inwardnesswhich in principle cannot be judged by any external and objective criterion. Only the


individual who strives to attain authentic life is able to feel whether he or she has beensuccessful. Nietzsche is aware of this:

One should not dodge one’s tests, though they may be the most dangerous game one could play and are tests that are taken in the end before no witness or judge but ourselves.

(BGE, sec. 41)

At this point a crucial question arises: do the powerful need a society at all? Is it not thecase that the need for others indicates a feebleness and insufficiency of positive power orauthenticity? In answer, Nietzsche may point out that the powerful and authentic man isnot identical with an omnipotent and absolutely perfect God. There is no upper limit topower, and there is no optimum for authenticity. Moreover, cultural enterprisesnecessarily require the association and collaboration of various creative powers, eachcontributing its distinct capacities to the common enterprise. To make the personal andsocial manifestation possible, any creation, even the most individual and idiosyncratic,requires the linguistic and social fabric as a necessary condition. There is no powerwithout creation and form-giving, as there is no authenticity without some sort of determined action. Hence there is no power and no authenticity without society, and theiressential manifestations are impossible apart from any social context.

Further, since absolute authentic power never actually exists, and since there is no creation ex nihilo, powerful and authentic individuals need each other, and need society and culture as the vital working framework within which they create themselves and theirobjects. Society itself obviously also requires morality to organize and consolidate it.Nietzsche, then, is not a negating ‘nihilist’; he does not wish to overthrow society and go beyond its limits. The ‘Antichrist’ within him does not make him into an anarchist.

However, here we have arrived at the crux of the matter: the cry for authenticityappears at the twilight of the rational ethic—at the ‘twilight of the idols’. It is an explicit expression of revolt against the spirit of objectivity. Thus it is inconceivable to have afully authentic individual living in society, which by nature is founded upon a set ofobjective norms and a common ethos. To clarify this point let me draw an analogy fromthe domain of psychoanalysis.17 If neurosis is, as Freud claims, a natural outcome of the repressive society, which is founded upon such repression, can we imagine a societywhere there are no neurotic people? This question remains valid even for a society all ofwhose neurotic individuals have successfully undergone psychoanalytic treatment. Butonce they try to live in that society under, more or less, the same conditions as causedtheir neurosis in the first place, will they not to some degree regress? The sameconsideration is relevant to the individual whose quest for authenticity is supposedlyfinally fulfilled. Since such a person continues to be a member of society, the processesof social conditioning and levelling will continue to exert their inauthenticating effects.Moreover, imagine a society where authenticity became a general norm: such a societywould either be destroyed or would destroy that authenticity, which would be manifestedprecisely in those individuals who attempted to overcome its ethic and exhibited the spiritof revolt. Hence the search for authenticity faces what seems to be a paradoxicalsituation: it cannot be materialized without society, nor can it be lived within its


framework. Nietzsche’s genealogy cannot provide us with the sought-after empirical evidence that

authenticity has been common among human beings in any given society historically. Hehad no objective criteria for ‘judging’. Yet, I think, he was well aware of the difficulty oftrying to allow for the ‘ought’ of authenticity within the social ‘is’. The fact is that he leaves this issue intentionally vague in the closing sentence of his book, whereZarathustra, who personifies the ideal of authenticity, leaves his ‘cave’ in order to do—what? To return to society? It is far from completely clear: Thus spoke Zarathustra, andhe left his cave, glowing and strong as a morning sun that comes out of darkmountains’ (Z, p. 439). The metaphor of a ‘sun’ implies that Zarathustra, not being able to become part of the human-social nexus, is like the sun, which, not being part of theearth, only warms it from above. Zarathustra can only inspire us to try and becomeauthentic, to be what we really are. Authenticity is a kind of regulative and correctiveideal rather than a manifestly viable norm.

VI

Hence we must understand Nietzsche’s basic idea of the ‘transfiguration of all values’ not as radical abolition of the inauthentic ethic, but as a gradual approximation toauthenticity. This process is constantly taking place ‘within a single soul’ (BGE, sec. 260, p. 204) vacillating between opposed modes of living. Thus Nietzsche is not proposing anew ethics, but, rather, is describing the transitory sentiments and mental states of theindividual, ‘the true pathos of every period of our life’, containing, among others, ‘the pathos of nobility and distance’ and ‘the Yes-saying pathos’.18 It should be noted that Nietzsche occasionally identifies the ‘will to power’ with pathos: ‘The will to power is not a being, not a becoming, but a pathos’19 As an inward experience, the varioussentiments, temperaments, emotional states and types of pathos of the personality requireno definite ontological status or metaphysical commitment; hence they are the mostrelevant factors in the discussion of authenticity, which likewise shuns such constrainingcategorizations.

It is important to stress that the central notion of Nietzsche’s philosophy is not the will, but the feeling of power. Indeed, Nietzsche denies the existence of the will as such, opposing what he considers an invalid transition from ‘the feeling of will’ to the concept of ‘the will itself’ (GS, sec. 127). The intensification of the ‘feeling of power’ is reflected in a tendency to see it in ontological terms, but the will is a fictitious entity. Nietzscherejects any reification of the will and conceives of volition only in terms of functions andactivities: there is no will but only ‘willing’ (GM, first essay, sec. 13). The phrase ‘will to power’ does not express an ontological principle referring to some entity underlying thephenomenon of pathos. Nietzsche might have seemed more consistent, then, if he hadused the expression ‘the pathos of power’ or ‘authenticity’ instead of ‘the will to power’. Here, as elsewhere, his language is not altogether compatible with the central direction ofhis thought. (We should also recall that the term ‘the will to power’ occurs most


frequently in the text so titled, a text which Nietzsche did not officially authorize forpublication.)

It follows that within the framework of Nietzschean philosophy we cannot speak about authentic character or self. Authenticity is a predicate not of character or the self, butmerely of acts and pathos. It describes acts but not constant essences. In extremesituations, where the general and objective norms are no longer applicable, authentic actscan emerge and become conspicuous. However, these acts in themselves cannot becomenew or renewed norms and moral prescriptions:

Suppose nothing else were ‘given’ as real except our world of desires and passions, and we could not get down, or up, to any other ‘reality’ besides the reality of our drives.

(BGE, sec. 36)

This immanent human reality excites the various types of pathos in any transitory periodof our life. Nietzsche identifies ‘the reality of our drives’ with ‘the development and ramification of one basic form of the will—namely, of the will to power’ (ibid., p. 48). The concept of ‘the will’ is superfluous here, or at least empty of rational and purposive meaning, and the identity between pathos and power is again emphasized. On this pointwe should heed Heidegger’s warning not to be led astray by Nietzsche’s language—‘will’ is ‘only a word’,20 to which we succumb ‘owing to the seduction (Verführung) of language’ (GM, p. 45), as Nietzsche himself cautions us. Wittgenstein’s remark in Philosophical Investigations that ‘philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of ourintelligence by means of language’ would draw a sympathetic response from Nietzsche.

The will in Nietzsche is no more than a fluid collection of affects and a bundle of different types of pathos. His concept of power refers to the pathological function thatexternalizes the various transitory types of pathos. Power transforms moments of pathosinto interpretations and perspectives through which they become enduring creations. Noone perspective is more correct than another, just as there is no one pathos which is truerthan others. All types of pathos are of equal epistemological legitimacy. The wholecomplex of possible moments of pathos and their correlative perspectives is collectivelysubsumed under the rubric ‘power’. Nietzsche does not reject the ‘negative’ (inauthentic) types of power/pathos because they are less true. They are rejected as detrimental anddestructive to his ideal of the pathos of authenticity, which is concretized in the notion ofthe Übermensch, in whom the will to power becomes identical with the will to authenticity. Nietzsche is aware that such a personality cannot be realized completely; theÜbermensch provides only a regulative idea, a model to approximate and emulate. It is acorrective to the overemphasis on the equality, the objectivity, the levelling processes ofmodernity that result in dissolution of the self. And indeed Nietzsche does not offerconcrete examples of the Übermensch, always being careful not to attach to it any historical name:

To be a human being with one elevated feeling—to be a single great mood incarnate—that has hitherto been a mere dream and a delightful possibility; as yet history does not offer us any certain examples.


(GS, sec. 288)

In the absence of a historical example that could provide an appropriate model, Nietzscherelied on his literary imagination. Zarathustra became a literary paradigm of how artcould lead to authenticity. Sublime, enticing descriptions rather than authoritativeprescriptions are offered to awaken us from our inauthentic slumbers. Nietzsche’s tacticsof enticement were intended to induce in us the desire for the pathos of authenticity. Asfor those already searching, Nietzsche tries to entice them to intensify their quest.

The attempt ‘to become who you are’ must be carried out alone, through one’s ownmental resources. Nonetheless, it is possible to arouse, to educate and to entice others todo this without constraining their free self-achievement. And Nietzsche even attempts tofortify this autonomy by deliberately introducing a sceptical element into his enticing‘ladder’.

VII

Nietzsche’s theory of perspectives and its sceptical ramifications are yet anotherpedagogical means to entice the reader to seek authenticity beyond the ethos of sincerityand objectivity. Nietzsche tries to lead us to that authentic state of ‘higher human beingswho desire and provoke contradiction’, since in his eyes ‘the ability to contradict…is stillmore excellent and constitutes what is really great’. This is ‘the step of steps of theliberated spirit’ (GS, sec. 297). Nietzsche tries to entice us into making this ‘step’ with hisperspectivism. He is well aware that his teachings regarding authenticity are not valid inthe classical logical sense. He provokes us to challenge his view: ‘Supposing that this alsois only interpretation—and you will be eager enough to make this objection?—well, somuch the better’ (BGE, sec. 22). His scepticism highlights the peculiar status of hisphilosophy: it stands or falls neither on its rational validity or invalidity, nor on its truth orfalsehood, but only on the degree of its allure. It is supposed to help us to liveauthentically in a purposeless world which ‘may include infinite interpretations’ (GS, sec.374). The truth value of his philosophy is an irrelevant issue in the context of this project.His enticing discussions and literary presentations deliberately abjuring any cognitivefoundation are exclusively directed towards evoking the emotional pathos that expressesand stimulates one’s power to become ‘what one is’.

This becoming is a dynamic and a-rational process; hence no eternal value is capable ofexpressing it. Indeed, authenticity does not attach itself to fixed values. Rather, asNietzsche stresses (BGE, sec. 41), drawing a model of authentic life-patterns, it isdetermined by impermanence, its positive pathos. At every stage of his philosophizing,Nietzsche is conscious that this stage is actually only a ‘step’ to overcome and proceedfurther: ‘Those were steps for me, and I have climbed up over them; to that end I had topass over them. Yet they thought that I wanted to retire on them.’21 Here, however, wereach the limits of our capacity to speak rationally in a world of chaos and pathos withouta logos. And perhaps Nietzsche intended to bring us to this ultimate boundary in order to


help us transcend his own thought as well, thereby assisting us to reach real maturity ofpositive power: standing on our own feet and throwing away all crutches, includingNietzsche’s.

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra incites us as follows: ‘This is my way; where is yours?—thus I answered those who asked me “the way”. For the way—that does not exist’ (Z, p. 307). At every stage Nietzsche tries to entice us to overcome even his own thought andinfluence. This is the real meaning of his saying: ‘It is part of the humanity of a master to warn his pupil about himself’ (D, sec. 447).

Now we are in a better position to grasp why Nietzsche’s enticement includes a sceptical component ultimately intended to help us overcome even his own allure. Butwhat sense can one make of an enticement which also includes deterrents? It seems thatNietzsche believes that when we have reached the advanced stages, and have overcomethe emotional barriers and the ethic of objectivity and honesty, we will have discoveredand built up enough power and immunity to be able to withstand this scepticism and even‘joyfully’ embrace it, showing that we have really attained authentic power.

Moreover, any process of enticement also tests our ability to be enticed. ThusNietzsche, by means of his perspectivism, introduces the self-checking mechanism designed to test the genuine power of the enticed person. He introduced perspectivismexplicitly in the fifth book of The Gay Science, which was added only in the secondedition in 1887,22 the year in which he started to write his Genealogie, the final rung of his ladder to authenticity. The whole process is actually a dialectical one: the moreefficiently power is uncovered and reactivated, the greater the likelihood that theindividual will persevere through the more advanced stages, being able to withstand boththe test of scepticism and the reality looming at every step on the road to authenticity. If we have already reached this point, our power will have been most favourably revealed.Only then will Nietzsche be able to throw away the philosophical crutches he has givenus and send us to our own walks of life and their authentic manifestations: ‘And if you now lack all ladders, then you must know how to climb on your own head’ (Z, p. 265).

Notes

1 Daybreak, trans. R.J.Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)(henceforth D), sec. 73; p. 73. Also see The Gay Science, trans. W.Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974) (henceforth GS), sec. 357; Beyond Good and Evil, trans. W.Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1966) (henceforth BGE), sec. 1.

2 Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans. M.Cowan (Chicago, Ill.: Henry Regnery,1962), p. 25.

3 Thus Nietzsche’s morality of power ultimately turns out to be the means by which all hisearlier and later views ‘become…more and more firmly attached to one another, entwinedand interlaced with one another’: On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. W.Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1969) (henceforth GM), Preface 2, p. 16. This interrelation of centralNietzschean concepts and motives transforms what would at first seem a loosely connected


and aphoristic body of work into a positive and comprehensive philosophy of authenticity—and, moreover, one which can be discussed coherently.

4 Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’, in Untimely Meditations, trans. R.J.Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) (henceforth SE), p. 127.

5 See Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1967)(henceforth EH), p. 258, where he says: ‘My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different…. Not merely bear what is necessary, still lessconceal it…but love it.’

6 This distinction between Kraft and Macht is crucial to any understanding of Nietzsche’s mature doctrine of power: see Jacob Golomb, Nietzsche’s Enticing Psychology of Power(Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1989), pp. 179–221.

7 The Birth of Tragedy, trans. W.Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1967) (henceforth BT), p. 37. 8 W.Kaufmann, Nietzsche (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 158. 9 ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. W.Kaufmann (New York:

Viking, 1954) (henceforth Z), p. 137. 10 GS, sec. 346, p. 287. 11 My translation from BGE, sec. 42; cf. BGE, sec. 205. Nietzsche’s play on the words Versuch

(hypothesis or experiment) and Versuchung (temptation or enticement) is not, as Kaufmannclaims in his translation (BGE, pp. 52–3 n. 26), unintentional. It points to one of the mostsignificant features of Nietzsche’s philosophy, namely, that it is a sophisticated mode ofenticement.

12 See, e.g., GM, first essay, sections 8, 9. 13 See, e.g., BGE, sec. 295. Cf. Alexander Nehamas’s discussion of the philosophical

significance of Nietzsche’s literary styles in his Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985).

14 Human, All Too Human, trans. R.J.Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1986) (henceforth HH), p. 23.

15 An illuminating example of such a ‘freezing’ process, based upon an implicit set of valueslatent within ourselves, can be found in his analysis of the ascetic ideal, to him the ultimateexpression of inauthenticity: see esp. GM, third essay, sec. 23.

16 BGE, sec. 262; GM, first essay, sec. 16. 17 Though not so alien to Nietzsche, who has clearly anticipated Freudian thought and such

notions as sublimation, repression, the unconscious, and interpretation of dreams: cf.Golomb, Nietzsche’s Enticing Psychology of Power (cited n. 5 above).

18 GS, sec. 317, p. 252; BGE, sec. 257; EH, p. 296. 19 The Will to Power, trans. W.Kaufmann and R.J.Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1967), sec.

635, p. 339; cf. T.B.Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), p. 257.

20 M.Heidegger, Nietzsche (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961), Bd I, p. 650. 21 ‘Twilight of the Idols’, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Kaufmann, p. 472. 22 Mainly in the fifth book of The Gay Science, which was added only in the second edition of

1887 (GS, sec. 373, 374, etc.) and in the posthumous fragments from this period.


5 Heidegger’s ontology of

authenticity

The philosophical birth of the concept of authenticity was impeded by two acuteproblems: how could authenticity be recognized, and how was it to be implemented? Theformer arose from the fact that neither Kierkegaard’s authentic faith nor Nietzsche’s pathos of authenticity could be identified by objective criteria. How could one rationallyevaluate one’s progress towards achieving authenticity? The second problem was whether the authentic individual could, in principle, emerge and live in society as weknow it. Those for whom authenticity is at the very heart of the existential challenge mustexplain how its ethic is possible. As we saw in the preceding chapters, no satisfactorysolutions to these problems were devised by the early existentialists.

The second generation of thinkers on authenticity, notably Heidegger and Sartre, tackled these problems by systematically ontologizing the idea of authenticity. By turningfrom the informal nineteenth-century notion of authenticity as pathos to its systematic twentieth-century version as phenomenological ontology they betrayed the true spirit ofthis ideal. Camus’s revolt against this development, and his attempt to return to Nietzschean intuitions, came too late. Indeed, as a result of Heidegger’s impact on current Continental philosophy, authenticity has been denuded of its vitality. The Heidegger-Sartre betrayal, does, however, expose the fundamental either/or: one opts either forauthentic personal pathos or for a Kantian and/or Hegelian ethics. There can be noKantian or Hegelian authenticity.

On the surface Heidegger might seem like an old-fashioned systembuilder striving to attain objective truth. Seeking ‘to interpret the meaning of Being’,1 he employs the heavy academic jargon usually associated with Kantians and Hegelians. The attempt to lay afoundation for ‘funda-mental ontology’ leads him to the apparently speculative question of ‘what we really mean by the word “being” (BT, p. 19). Thus his philosophical concerns appear to be detached from existential issues and he seems indifferent toKierkegaard’s and Nietzsche’s goal of promoting authenticity and enticing their readersinto adopting it.

In fact the question ‘What does it mean to be?’ has nothing to do with ‘soaring speculation’, since it is ‘of all questions, both the most basic and the mostconcrete’ (ibid., p. 29). Answering this question can have a concrete impact on one’s life. Despite his claim that he can only analyse but not affect us, Heidegger recognizes thenecessity that ‘out of reflection we receive instruction’.2 Like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche,


he tries to motivate us to change our lives, or at least our perceptions of them. Even in hislater writings, the attentive reader cannot fail to discern, behind the tone of passiveresignation, his determination not to let human selves remain as they are: ‘what is at stake is a transformation in man’s Being itself’.3

Heidegger contends that before answering the classic metaphysical question (‘What is?’) we must first ask the meaning of ‘is’ in general. Such an inquiry must start from thenotion of authentic Dasein,4 an entity which genuinely exemplifies its Being. Hence even a purely ontological orientation requires the notion of authenticity, which becomescentral to Heidegger’s early philosophy. It is often incorrectly believed, however, thatHeidegger’s sole concern is with the classic ontological question of being—‘What exists?’ He holds, rather, that to answer it adequately one must first ask: ‘What is the meaning of “is”, of Being?’ Until we have answered this question, answers to the former,so abundant in metaphysics, are meaningless. But to ask it is not to assert that the issue ofauthenticity is of secondary importance, that it is solely a means to disclose what reallymatters to Heidegger: the meaning of Being. This is so obvious that I would not havestated it were it not for the fact that many people seem to deny this.5 In any event, authenticity is a genuine ‘is-ness’ (Existenz); hence to ask about the meaning of Being isto look for the meaning of authenticity.

To be Dasein is to ask these questions. They become an issue only for an authentic Being, whose authenticity is ‘hidden’ but nonetheless given ‘beforehand’ (BT, p. 25). The very search for authenticity ‘constitutes its meaning’ (ibid., p. 59) and discloses the seeker’s authenticity. To be authentic Dasein, therefore, is to grasp that one cannotbecome authentic as an ontic entity among entities, as a static being, but only as theasking, searching Becoming, that is, as a transcendent consciousness, whose projected intentionalities become authentic ‘only by anticipation’ (ibid., p. 310). This point will become clearer when I discuss Heidegger’s notion of ‘Being-towards-death’.

Meanwhile we should bear in mind that Heidegger asks two cardinal questions: first,the a priori ontological structure of Being that allows one to become aware of one’s authenticity or inauthenticity (the problem of recognition) and, second, the a prioriconditions required for authentic Being to be viable at the ontic level as well (the problemof implementation). The quest for (the meaning of) Being and the quest for authenticityare inextricably linked and even, in a sense, coterminous, since ‘Every doctrine of Being is in itself alone a doctrine of man’s essential nature’,6 which is the capacity for inquiring into its own Being while being open to the call of authenticity.

But if Heidegger denies any connection with existentialism, if he is uninterested inphilosophical anthropology, why does he occupy such a central role among thinkersabout authenticity? If his sole concern is what it means to Be, how can he contribute tothe ethical dilemma of the possibility of authenticity?

Heidegger touched on these questions: ‘To accomplish means to unfold something into the fullness of its essence…to lead it forth into this fullness—producere’.7 Heidegger tries to promote authenticity by unfolding its meaning into ‘the fullness’. Since ‘thinking acts insofar as it thinks’ (LH, p. 193), insofar as Heidegger is preoccupied with theontological investigation of authentic Being, his thinking acts on his readers by providingthem with the necessary a priori framework for their morality. Ethics cannot exist apartfrom fundamental thinking, Heidegger states, for thinking that is truly fundamental ‘is in

Heidegger’s ontology of authenticity 62

itself the original ethics’ (LH, p. 235). One of the conclusions of Heidegger’s inquiry into authenticity is its priority over morality. Authenticity is the fundamental a prioricondition for a viable ethics. To paraphrase Kant, ontic inquiry without an ontologicalframework is blind; ontological investigation without the ethical import (of enticement) isempty.

In 1927, Heidegger declared the practical import of his philosophy: ‘Philosophy is the ontological corrective formally pointing out the ontic.’8 Elsewhere Heidegger reiterates the relevance of philosophy to life: ‘it is the authentic function of philosophy to challengehistorical Dasein and hence…granted that we cannot do anything with philosophy, mightnot philosophy, if we concern ourselves with it, do something with us?’9

The meaning of authenticity, as Heidegger may have learned from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, cannot be found by studying concrete persons within a

specific society. Only a transcendental point of view provides answers to the twoproblems posed above: authenticity can indeed be defined a priori and is socially viable,because it is an ontological existential. However, here lie the roots of Heidegger’s betrayal of the Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean conceptions of authentic life. Harnessingthe open-ended notion of authenticity to a systematic yoke leads to its being swallowedup by ontology on a grand scale, and becoming an essential relation between the self and the world. And thus Heidegger, in his later writings, shifted his focus from the ontologyof Dosein’s authenticity to Being itself. This minimized the voluntaristic and humanelements of authenticity still found in Being and Time and contributed further to its betrayal.

Heidegger’s question about Being can be rephrased in terms of authenticity: What is an authentic Dasein? How is its authenticity lost? How is it regained and acted on in thesocial sphere? While addressing these questions, this chapter presents and questionsHeidegger’s ontology of authenticity as a possible solution to the problems associatedwith this notion in previous writers.

I

A significant area of affinity between Heidegger and earlier proponents of authenticitylies in his attempt to entice his readers. This exhortatory endeavour is ironicallyconcealed under the technical jargon of his seemingly neutral writings. His insistence onthe objective validity of his ontological explications and his use of the phenomenologicalmethod to attain apodictic results keep him from using an emotional tone. WithHeidegger we appear to return to the objective language of traditional philosophy, whichshuns any such pathos as seems to obscure the natural light of our reason and the clarityof ‘the things themselves’ (BT, p. 49).

To what extent does Heidegger belong with those philosophers who sought to change their readers’ lives and selves? On the surface, Heidegger was more interested in changing the course of the history of philosophy, which had forgotten ‘the question of Being’ (ibid., p. 2), than in changing his readers’ modes of existence. His interests appear


professional rather than existential, and his teaching aspires to enlighten rather than toconvince. He even provides a philosophical argument for this absence of any explicitattempt to influence readers directly. Referring to Dasein’s authentic ‘ontological possibility’, he says:

Let Dasein itself project itself upon this possibility, without holding up to Dasein an ideal of existence with any special ‘content’, or forcing any such ideal upon it ‘from outside’.

(BT, p. 311; cf. ibid., pp. 315–16)

Authenticity must emerge from Dasein’s own self, not from pressure, manipulation and incitement. In Being and Time Heidegger seems to side with Hegel’s opposition to any kind of philosophical evocation by insisting on the non-evaluative, ontologically neutral character of his analyses (ibid., p. 211). Yet this is incompatible with the appreciation ofthe evocative import of Kierkegaard’s philosophy expressed in his remark that there is much ‘to be learned philosophically from [Kierkegaard’s] “edifying” writings’ (ibid., p. 494). Heidegger also quotes Count Yorck’s description of his own philosophy approvingly: “The practical aim of our standpoint is one that is pedagogical in the broadest and deepest sense of the word…to make possible the moulding ofindividuality’ (ibid., p. 454), and admits that his ‘preparatory existential-temporal analytic of Dasein is resolved to foster the spirit of Count Yorck’ (ibid., p. 455).

The contradiction can be reconciled when we take his insistence on neutral interpretation as part of a sophisticated enticement tactic. Here I agree with Harries that‘Being and Time can be read as an edifying discourse disguised as fundamental ontology’, and with Rorty’s comment that Heidegger’s ‘ “most elementary words” are words designed to express the predicament of the ironic theorist’.10 If one of the components of irony is a simulated innocence and the pretence of avoiding anyjudgement, then here we have an ironic posture at its best. Looking closely atHeidegger’s basic distinctions, we cannot but feel that the terms he uses for authenticmodes of life as opposed to inauthentic ones are charged with evaluative connotationsand associations of which he is well aware. He employs these provocative terms to makeus more self-conscious, and thereby to awaken our readiness for change in our lives.

Heidegger calls the inauthentic manifestations of human being ‘the “falling” of Dasein’ (ibid., p. 219; Verfallen connotes deterioration and collapse). He then tries to convince us, ironically, that his

term does not express any negative evaluation, but is used to signify that Dasein is proximally and for the most part alongside the ‘world’ of its concern…Being-lost in the publicness of the ‘they’…fallen away from itself as an authentic potentiality for Being its Self.

(ibid, p. 220)

But surely ‘Being-lost’ is bad: nobody wants to be lost or to fall. The very term ‘fall’, when addressed to a mainly Christian public, arouses negative associations of whichHeidegger, as a former student of theology, was quite aware.


He speaks of the inauthentic ‘evasive concealment in the face of death’ (ibid., p. 300), of the ‘illusion’ and the ‘failure’ to recognize one’s authenticity (ibid., p. 301). These terms are hardly neutral. Can we accept unreservedly Heidegger’s reassurance that an expression such as ‘idle talk’ (the inauthentic counterpart of authentic ‘discourse’) ‘is not to be used here in a “disparaging” signification’ (ibid., p. 211)? When Heidegger describes Dasein’s movement towards the inauthentic mode of Being as a ‘downward plunge’ into ‘the groundlessness and nullity of inauthentic everydayness’ (ibid., p. 223), does this come across as a purely neutral description?

Heidegger might argue that such terms are negative only in everyday language, butfrom the perspective that seeks to explicate the a priori essence of Being such terms areneutral, with none of the a posteriori connotations ascribed to them by the ‘anyone’. Even so, the reader encounters these terms in an ontic way, namely, with naive pre-ontological associations. Such a predictable reception of Heideggerian terminology is crucial here: itmay provoke the reader into the very mood Heidegger wishes to excite. In the middle ofhis laborious ontological investigations, we find the beautiful Latin fable of Cura, who ‘shaped’ homo ‘out of humus [earth]’ (ibid., sec. 42). Why does Heidegger bring this‘pre-ontological’ story here ‘though its demonstrative force is “merely historical”’ (ibid., p. 241)? It is clear that the fable is used as a ‘force’ to effect the reader’s ‘transformation into that which he can be in Being-free for his ownmost possibilities’ (ibid., p. 243). Thus, we cannot fail to sense a prescriptive undertone which also reaffirms his thesis that,for man, to be is to care about one’s sense of authentic Being and self (ibid., pp. 175,240).

Heidegger’s use of seemingly neutral terms is intended to counter the ‘seductive’ forces prevalent in the inauthentic public realm. Like Nietzsche, who used the termVerführung for negative seduction, Hei-degger regards the public as trying to seduce Dasein to think and behave as it does: ‘The dominance of the public way’ is such that ‘in no case is a Dasein untouched and unseduced’ (unverführt, ibid., p. 213). Dasein is seduced into believing that adopting ‘their’ way of thinking and living will ensure a full, genuine and tranquil life. ‘However, this tranquillity in inauthentic Being does not seduce (verführt) one into stagnation and inactivity, but drives one into uninhibited hustle’ (ibid., p. 222). Heidegger’s language is plainly evaluative, at least from the point of view of thelayperson. Since his books are available to the public, they constitute enticing counter-seductions for the fallen Dasein, who may be moved by the evocative etymologies, thecontrasting pictures of authentic and inauthentic Daseins, and the literary digressions.

However, if authenticity is an a priori ontological phenomenon, what is the point inenticing us to be what we already necessarily are? The answer is that we are authentic solely as possibilities still to be ontically actualized. To be ontologically authentic is notyet to become authentic, and it is to entice us into becoming what we are that Heideggerresorts to phenomenological explications and ironic presentations.11 Following Kant, he urges us: ‘You must, because you can!’

II


Dasein is not an entity like material things, which are merely ‘present-at-hand’, but a process of becoming aware of its ownness and concerned with the meaning of Being. Itcan exist either authentically or inauthentically. By realizing my possibilities, by creatingand ‘winning’ myself, reflecting on the meaning of Being and being concerned about its development, I am authentic Dasein. My existing is fully determined by my own choices. The intimate relation between Heidegger’s eigentlich (authentic, genuine or real) and eigen (own) is lost in English. The possibility of inauthentic existence is also mine. But inthis case I grasp it not as an indefinite existence but as an entity among other entities, assheer facticity. I let my existence be determined and defined by others, thereby changingits meaning from existence to essence. My ownness becomes otherness and I lose myselfby my own actions.

Unlike previous thinkers who arrived at the notion by examining inauthentic patternsof life, Heidegger starts with a positive definition. Both authenticity and inauthenticityare defined positively, for the latter, as a modification of authenticity, also has a positive ontological status. Heidegger’s ontologizing leads to his making these modes intopositive features of Dasein’s Being. Inauthenticity is not a mere negation of authenticity,but rather a distinct characteristic. Heidegger cannot define the meaning of Being bytelling us first what it means not to Be. The positive approach to authenticity is reinforcedby the method of going back to ‘the things themselves’ (BT, pp. 49, 50), namely, to Daseins, analysing their structures and explicating their a priori meanings. Further, to attain an adequate description of the ‘essence’ (ibid., p. 67) of Being in its ‘totality’ a genuine specimen is needed, just as, in deriving the essential features of a circle, onemust first contemplate a true representation of a circle, not a distorted copy. The sameapplies to inauthenticity. Heidegger’s method requires that inauthentic Being be positive: one cannot ‘uncover’ what is not; therefore inauthenticity ‘must be made accessible by a positive characterization’ (ibid., p. 69) ‘because this phenomenon itself always gets “seen”’ (ibid., p. 85). Inauthenticity is doubly positive: it is a positive expression ofDasein’s mode, and it is indicative of another, more fundamental mode of Dasein’s Being—that of authenticity. Even if the mode of inauthenticity ‘is only the mode of fleeing in the face of it and forgetfulness thereof [i.e. of the question of the meaning ofBeing]’ (ibid., p. 69), this ‘forgetfulness’ points to the thing forgotten. Inauthenticityreveals what it betrays: the possibility of authenticity. Heidegger’s advance over previous thinkers is found in this insistence upon grasping the phenomenon of inauthenticitypositively. Here we find neither blunt condemnation nor rejection but a more balancedand empathetic understanding of this phenomenon. The twentieth-century processes of levelling, especially those rooted in technology and the global economy, may well havecontributed to this more realistic attitude.

A problem, however, arises from regarding inauthenticity as an a priori ‘structure of existentiality’ (ibid., p. 69): how will it be possible to overcome it and regain an authenticsense of ownness? If Dasein is essentially bound to the inessential, if its nature is to fleefrom its primordial authentic Being and transform itself into an externally determinedentity, what can induce it to forgo this betrayal and return to ownness? I shall look atthese questions later. At this stage it suffices to note that inauthenticity is onlyontologically but not ontically essential. Empirically, each Dasein preserves its free choice to decide whether it wants its authenticity or not.


The problem of recognizing authenticity and distinguishing it from inauthenticity finds its solution at the ontological level of inquiry. Though ‘structurally’ they are ‘indistinguishable’ (ibid., p. 70), since both belong essentially to the a priori constitutive structures of Dasein, they ‘can be very well grasped ontologically’ as two distinct modes of existence. The problem of recognition remains only at the ontic level. Still, this resultis quite positive. The a priori possibility of authenticity, which may or may not find itsactualization in the everyday lives of individuals, is assured.

Yet another problem which cannot be resolved at this stage is the question of priority.In one passage (BT, p. 68) Heidegger seems to imply that authenticity is ontologically prior to inauthenticity. A recurrent theme in Heidegger’s writings is ‘homecoming’, regaining what was ‘lost’, indicating that he sees authenticity as primordial and, at least in time, prior to inauthentic modes of Dasein. But if inauthenticity also has ‘mineness’ as an essential character, in what way is authentic ‘ownness’ or ‘mineness’ prior to the inauthentic mode? How can one mode be prior if both are a priori essentials of the sameDasein? From the phenomenological standpoint, it appears that the two modes are structurally and essentially equally grounded in Dasein. Heidegger’s later tendency to regard authenticity as fundamental (inauthenticity being its modification) is still latent atthis point. Thus, when Heidegger speaks of authenticity, he refers primarily to the a prioriontological structure in every Dasein. Every human being must have this structure, but itis not the case that every ontological ‘possibility’ for becoming an authentic Dasein is ontically realized. For each Dasein also has the a priori potential to become inauthentic,to lose itself and never win itself, and is free to choose.

To be Dasein is to question the meaning of Being. It becomes an issue solely for an authentic Being, whose authenticity is ‘hidden’ but nonetheless given ‘beforehand’ (ibid., p. 25). The very search for authenticity ‘constitutes its meaning’ (ibid., p. 59) and discloses the seeker’s authenticity. To be an authentic Dasein, therefore, is to grasp that one cannot become authentic as an ontic entity among entities, as a static being, but onlyas asking, searching Becoming, that is, as a transcendent consciousness, whose projectedintentionalities become authentic ‘only by anticipation’ (ibid., p. 310).

III

The meaning of Dasein’s Being cannot be found in an isolated Cartesian subject, for Dasein is necessarily rooted in the world. Without the world there is no Dasein, hence no authentic Dasein. Heidegger’s explication of ‘Being-in-the-world’ is an account of Dasein’s search for authenticity. The attitude of Dasein to its world is that of emotional and practical involvement in ‘being-with’, as opposed to the purely spatial and causal relationship of ‘being-beside’. For Dasein, to be is always to be with something or to ‘reside alongside’ someone else as ‘Being-with-one-another’ (BT, pp. 80, 163). As Dasein, capable of inquiring into its own Being, human Being loses its role as a substantial subject opposed to other objects in the world. The traditional subject/ objectdistinction is inappropriate, for it presupposes understanding of what it means to be a


subject or object. As the hyphens indicate, Being-in-the-world is a ‘unitary phenomenon’ (ibid., p. 78),

the elements of which are inseparable. The relation between Dasein and its world is that of an intentional coexistence within a common system of meaningful symbols and socialinstitutions. Grasping the ‘mineness’ of my Being cannot be achieved in a vacuum. My sense of my Being is possible precisely because it cannot be abstracted from the sense of‘mineness’ that refers to my world. I am; I can reflect upon this because my Being is fulfilled and enfolded in the world. I am, ergo I am in-the-world. It is possible, however, to be in-the-world inauthentically.

‘World’ does not refer to the natural world, since ‘Nature can also be when no Dasein exists.’12 Nor does it confront us as a picture confronts observers who are not part of it.The world’s relation to Dasein attests Dasein’s ecstatic and transcendental character. As aspiring, intending and projecting, ‘Dasein has always already stepped out beyond itself, ex-sistere, it is in a world’ (BPP, p. 170). Dasein’s mode of Being-in-the-world is not simply that of a fly in a bottle or a subject confronting an objective world, but that of anentity intimately immersed in it. Dasein’s world is of its making. In turn, it constitutesDasein’s experiences, endowing them with meaning. I dwell ‘within the world as projected by me’. To find my self through the world, I have to stand away (exstare) from it, but (and this is a crucial ‘but’) I must return to it and accept it as my ‘homeland’. This is the returning of the Sein to Da (its world) after it has lost or abandoned it. To findone’s self, one must lose it in the world. Estrangement from my world puts me in a state of ironic detachment from my self, enabling me to shape my self. Since, however, my sense of meaning (of what it means for me to be) is inseparable from the wider context of my Being-in-the-world, I cannot regain it without regaining the meaning of my Being-in-the-world and Being-with-one-another. I cannot be estranged from my world and at home with my self. Hence I cannot achieve my own sense of Being (my authenticity) apartfrom the community of other Daseins and the meanings, institutions and relations which are ‘tied up with Dasein’s ownmost Being’ (BT, p. 160). ‘Being-in is Being-withOthers’ (ibid., p. 155), for ‘Dasein, insofar as it is, has always submitted itself already toa “world” which it encounters, and this submission belongs essentially to its Being’ (ibid., pp. 120–1). Heidegger stresses this idea of the inevitable sociability of existence. Thus,for example, he asserts that the ‘so-called “private existence” is not really essential, that is to say free, human being. It simply insists on negating the public realm’ (LH, p. 197). Only those who insist on presenting Heidegger’s insight independently of its ontological frame can arrive at the bizarre conclusion that his philosophy leads to ‘the ultimate loneliness of individual existence’.13 In fact, Heidegger’s elaborate ontological apparatus is introduced precisely to set the so-called ‘solitary individual’ firmly within the inevitable social context. The modes of Being-in-the-world and Being-with-one-another are necessary even in uniquely personal moments such as death.

To regain authenticity, inauthenticity must be overcome. To become my own authentic Being, however, I need others, and our common world as a horizon which defines myownness vis-à-vis what is not genuinely mine. Heidegger concurs with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche that one becomes what one truly is by rejecting what one is not. For this oneneeds the world, which is partially one’s own. Yet this partial possession gives rise to feelings of alienation: one becomes estranged from that which was not strange to one


beforehand. Estrangement presupposes familiarity, as inauthenticity requires authenticity. We begin to grasp the dynamics of the search for authenticity: (a) the starting-point is

Being-in-the-World as ‘necessary a priori, but…far from sufficient for completely determining Dasein’s Being’ (BT p. 79). My Being can be authentically mine or I can lose this mineness, becoming (b) inauthentic in this world. This is my free choiceexercised at the ontic level to realize my possibilities. An ontological condition of myauthenticity is (c) my feeling estranged within the world, losing it and becomingdetached, and then (d) regaining authentic Being-in-the-world by ‘homecoming’, by overcoming the innate tendencies to inauthenticity which my Being-in-the-world and Being-with-one-another set in motion. This pattern presupposes that Dasein is a temporal Being; hence an ontological analysis of time and of Dasein’s temporality is introduced later on.

While the issue of the ethical viability of authenticity has to do with a ‘what’ (BT, p. 71) and with a ‘how’, that of the identification and recognition of authentic Being isessentially one of ‘a “who” (existence)’. Some progress has been made here, sinceHeidegger is in a better position to solve the problem of the ‘how’ by ontologically paving the way to ontic characterization. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche started from thesolitary individual who strove to attain genuine selfhood in isolation from the commonworld and, after attaining authenticity, had to protect it from the inroads of society.Heidegger’s picture is less Romantic and more modern. Throughout, Dasein is inseparably connected to its world, to the community of others and to history. Thestruggle for authenticity must necessarily be achieved within this framework. Thequestion is not how one can maintain one’s authentic self while living within society, buthow to explain its loss in the first place. Heidegger answers by embarking on the analysisof everydayness, into which authentic Being falls.

IV

The delicate balance between my sense of Being and my sense of my world, whichtogether constitute authenticity, collapses when ‘proximally and for the most part’ Dasein‘surrenders’ itself to the world, becoming ‘absorbed’ by it. The world ceases to belong to me, and, by succumbing to its many distractions, I belong to it instead. When I lose my

The ‘anyone’, which is nothing definite, and which all are, though notas the sum, prescribes the kind of Being of everydayness…. In these modes one’s way of Being is that of inauthenticity and failure to standby one’s Self…. Dasein has…fallen away from itself as authenticpotentiality for Being its Self, and has fallen into the ‘world’. Fallenness into the ‘world’ means an absorption in Being-with-one-another, in so far as the latter is guided by idle talk, curiosity, andambiguity.14


world, which becomes a strange and alienating objective world out there, I lose my sense of my own Being. I cease to be owner and master of my self and am owned by the public,the anyone. I become an entity ‘within-the-world’ (BT, p. 230), one object among many. Such an inauthentic Dasein becomes ‘present-at-hand’ for others, to be observed and defined, and ‘ready-to-hand’—available for their manipulation. The victory of theanonymous world over my world perpetuates and even intensifies the process ofbecoming inauthentic. Echoing Kierkegaard’s The Present Age, Heidegger claims that by losing my unique sense of Being, I let ‘the real dictatorship of the anyone’ (BT, p. 164) unfold and swallow my authentic Self, ‘levelling’ it ‘down’ to the ‘averageness’ of ‘publicness’ (ibid., 165). In the realm of inauthenticity ‘everyone is the other, and no one is himself’ (ibid., p. 165).

Living, as we must, in society, are we doomed to this anonymous hell, or can we resist these powerful forces that lead us towards inauthenticity? The expression ‘proximally and for the most part’, used by Heidegger frequently in reference to inauthenticity, is ambiguous, evading the question of whether inauthenticity is an essential and necessarymode of Being-in-the-world. However, the following crucial passage hints at thepossibility of there being a community of authentic Beings-in-the-World:

The Being-with-one-another of those who are hired for the same affair often thrives only on mistrust. On the other hand, when they devote themselves to the same affair in common, their doing so is determined by the manner in which their Dasein, each in its own way, has been taken hold of. They thus become authentically bound together, and this makes possible the right kind of objectivity, which frees the Other in his freedom for himself. Everyday Being-with-one-another maintains itself between the two extremes of positive solicitude—that which leaps in and dominates, and that which leaps forth and liberates. It brings numerous mixed forms to maturity; to describe these and classify them would take us beyond the limits of this investigation.

(BT, p. 159)

When others regard me, and each other, as ready-to-hand objects to be used and manipulated, caring exclusively about their own concerns, interests and profits,inauthentic relations are established. ‘Inconsiderateness’ and ‘indifference’ as to my freedom and ownness are manifested, as they try to ‘dominate’ me. Yet there is also ‘mature’ interaction and ‘authentic care’; unfortunately, Heidegger, limiting him-self to description of the inauthentic fall, does not elaborate on it here. There is, however, theontological possibility that human beings function in such a way that ‘others are not proximally present-at-hand as free floating subjects along with other Things, but showthemselves in the world in their special environmental Being’ (ibid., p. 160). These are cases of ‘solicitude’ and ‘authentically bound’ relations in which people, includingoneself, project themselves on to the ‘same affair in common’, ‘caring for’ (Fürsorge) each other’s ‘existence’. Such instances of mutual caring and respect for each other’s well-being, for individual freedom and feelings of ‘ownness’, can be found, perhaps, in mature relations of love or marriage, which transcend satisfaction of symbiotic oregocentric needs. In them, the partner’s project of being authentic becomes a ‘common


affair’. In such relations, which can also exist between friends, we can attain the ‘right kind of objectivity’, that which does not turn us into objects but provides a social framework in which to live significantly, according to one’s own rights, working towards personal or shared goals.

But do not the prevailing social norms constitute insurmountable empirical obstacles toauthenticity? Being and Time does contain descriptions of dramatic clashes between theanyone and the singular individual who attempts to attain authenticity (e.g. BT, p. 298); however, we do not find in Heidegger head-on confrontation between authenticity andthe prevailing ethos. If one can maintain one’s authenticity, ultimately society will not be able to take it out of one’s hands. The fall to the inauthentic mode of Being is not directlycaused by sociability, though social intercourse serves as a seductive medium forDasein’s fall, and even ‘aggravates the falling’ (ibid., p. 222). The reason for the fall is found in one’s ontologically existential and immanent state of mind: anxiety.

Owing to ‘the dominance of the public way…in no case is a Dasein untouched andunseduced’ (ibid., p. 213) by the ontic pervasiveness and forcefulness of inauthenticity.Use of the neutral term ‘temptation’ (Versucbung, which also means test or experiment; SZ, p. 177), however, implies that Dasein need not necessarily succumb but can remain authentic. Inauthenticity does not have to be one’s ultimate fate at the ontic level of public everydayness, despite the temptations and distractions of everydayness, and thepressure to lose one’s self in the anyone’s ‘uninhibited hustle’ (BT, p. 222). For if one is aware that these are merely temptations, one can yield, knowing that only temporaryrelief from one’s struggle for authenticity is possible. By recognizing distractions for what they are, namely, enticements to self-abandonment, one increases the chance of climbing back from fallenness. If, however, one succumbs without this awareness, one isdoomed to remain fallen. Like Nietzsche’s tests (Versuchungen), designed to distinguish the inferior from the superior, so Heidegger’s idea of temptation differentiates Daseinswhose potential for authentic Being can be realized from inauthentic Daseins. For the latter, temptation becomes seduction driving the Dasein to inauthenticity, in which it remains entrenched.

‘Being-in-the-world is in itself tempting (versucherisch)’ (ibid., p. 221), because it constitutes the most accessible route for falling into inauthenticity. But this does notmean that falling is an essential part of Dasein’s Being-in-the-world. Being-in-the-world and inauthenticity or fall are distinct; otherwise it would make no sense to speak of beingtempted to fall. Nowhere does Heidegger identify Being-in-the-world with everydayness. However, such an identification is presupposed by those commentators who tend toregard Heidegger’s ideal of authenticity as unattainable, impractical or a-social. If we recall Heidegger’s remark about ‘authentic’ Being-with-one-another, it follows that falling is not an ineluctable aspect of Dasein’s social existence. Inauthenticity is ‘for the most part’ a pervasive feature of the world of the anyone, but not a necessary one. Dasein need not interpret itself along the lines of the public ethos. It can resist public self-interpretation and the temptation to merge with the anonymous anyone. It can cling to itsown sense of authentic Being by regarding its basic condition of Being-in-the-world as a necessary ‘test’ of its authenticity. ‘The laying-bare of Dasein’s primordial Being must rather be wrested from Dasein by following the opposite course from that taken by the falling ontico-ontological tendency of interpretation’ (BT, p. 359). In Heidegger, as in


Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, we can discern a kind of counter-temptation to the seductive everyday interpretation. Indeed, Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein’s Being-in-the-world, in disclosing to the reader a viable ontological possibility for authentic Being, is just such acounter-temptation.

In addition to the seductive elements of everydayness that make Dasein forget its concern with its Being, another public mechanism can lead to self-abandonment. Being-in-the-world-with-one-another makes possible the comparison of one’s self to other selves. Dasein ‘compares itself with everything’ and ‘drifts along towards an alienation in which its ownmost potentiality-for-Being is hidden from it’ (ibid., p. 222). By evaluating one’s own achievements in terms of those of others, one lets the world intrudeand destroy one’s sense of self. The determination of one’s self ceases to be one’s own. It defines itself statistically until the average anyone swallows it. The way out is ‘Beware! Don’t compare!’

This is easier said than done. In Being-alongside-each-other and competing with one another, we naturally become entangled in the statistical framework of comparisons andalienation. In certain cases, though, we can free ourselves from these inauthenticatingrelations. Having ‘the same affair in common’, and being ‘authentically bound together’ (ibid., p. 158) let one overcome the tendency to compare oneself to others. Through preoccupation with the well-being of another or with one’s contributions to ‘the same affair’, one measures one’s efforts not in terms of others but in terms of what is leftto be done. Within this type of interaction one feels and thinks authentically and directlywithout the mediation of publicness. The public, however, is not simply a source ofseduction, but also deceives, covering up its fallenness with ‘a sham of authenticity’ (ibid., p. 223), and presenting it as self-fulfilment. Feeling the shame, one feels ‘not at home’ (unheimlich) and self-conscious. By contrast, the authentic Daseinfeels heimlich, at home with its self.

But what exactly is Dasein promised? Dasein is seduced by the promise of ‘tranquillity, for which everything is “in the best of order”’ (ibid., p. 222). The bait which ensnares Dasein is the possibility of shaking off the anxiety Dasein necessarily feels in Being-in-the-world. Dasein loses its primordial sense of authentic Being not because it isBeing-with-one-another but because it is essentially anxious. It can attain authenticitysolely as Being-in-the-world, namely, when it faces and chooses possible ways ormodifications of its own Being. We are fundamentally anxious, given our responsibilityfor our own Being. We are condemned to be free ‘shepherds’ of our authenticity; hence, we are condemned to anxiety. Feeling the authenticity of my Being invokes the Angstwhich makes me ‘flee’ and lose my sense of self; my immediate response to responsibility is anxiety.

This explains why authenticity is so hard to achieve and so transitory. The source of inauthenticity lies precisely in the gut feelings of selfhood. ‘Anxiety throws Dasein back upon’ its authenticity, but indirectly: by inciting one to flee one’s authenticity, anxiety thereby discloses it. Since authenticity is always possible, one is always anxious. Indeed,to be anxious simply means to feel the inner call of authen-ticity. To evade this call is thus a way to overcome anxiety. But with its loss, we also lose our feelings of self. The‘everyday publicness of the “anyone”’, which ‘absorbs’ the anxious Dasein, serves as its ‘tranquillizer’ (ibid., p. 233). With an inauthentic self, one no longer feels the anxiety of


freedom. One gives up one’s authenticity to gain peace of mind, but one’s mind becomes public property, estranged from its vital origins. Because escape inevitably discloses thething one is escaping—namely, anxiety—there is no complete escape. Hence, the process of fleeing into publicness is saturated with ‘latent anxiety’ (ibid., p. 237), which makes one’s Being aware of itself as anxious, thereby ‘individualizing’ it.

In Angst there is no definite intentional object; hence the very process of being anxious itself becomes the noema. That is, having no object, anxiety in its anxiousness feels its lack of an object; it feels Nichts (nothingness, non-Being). It responds by again experiencing anxiety. To eradicate this alienation, the self must be repossessed. Hence,anxiety discloses to Dasein that ‘authenticity and inauthenticity are possibilities of itsBeing’ (ibid., p. 235). Yet confronting these options and realizing that it is up to oneselfto decide between them gives rise to ‘real anxiety’ in ‘the very depths of [one’s] Being’ (ibid., p. 234).

But why does preoccupation with authenticity bring about such anxiety? The answerlies in the fact that to face one’s self is to face one’s facticity or finitude: the possibility ofnot being. It is to comprehend the ontological fact that our world is formed by us and thatit is essentially immanent. In self-confrontation one understands that one is ‘thrown’ into a finite world and seized by a haunting anxiety in the face of certain death that cannot berationalized away, for example, by projecting one’s responsibility or salvation onto transcendental forces.

The motif of finitude and death recurs in Heidegger’s Sisyphean circle of authenticity: (1) authenticity, or ownness of my Being-in-the-world > (2) anxiety in the face of (1) > (3) ownness lost by flight and fall into the anyone > (4) latent anxiety and the feeling ofunheimlichkeit > (5) individualization > (6) authentic ownness of my Being > (7) anxiety in the face of (6), and so on unto death. Thus for Heidegger, unlike Nietzsche andKierkegaard, the problem of the viability of authenticity has less to do with society andethics than with the ontology of freedom. It is not society that is responsible for thedearth of authentic Being, but rather, the a priori anxiety built into Dasein. The mostdecisive factor in breaking through this circularity to a viable mode of authentic existenceis Being-towards-death.

V

Together with others, one is, proximally and for the most part, inauthentic; then one diesalone, becoming authentic. Is this an accurate summary of Heidegger’s account of authenticity? Several interpreters believe so, claiming that since authenticity can beattained only in isolation from the anyone, and since only death can bring about suchisolation, only in relating to one’s ‘distinctively impending death’ (BT, p. 294) can one become authentic. This amounts to denying that authenticity can be a social mode ofBeing. Such a view was rejected by Heidegger, who repeatedly insisted that ‘death belongs to Being-in-the-world’ (ibid., p. 295; cf. p. 309). Authentically facing imminent death is an essential part of one’s social relations. How is this claim to be understood?


At the intuitive level, it means that in a complete vacuum, in a social void, one cannotrelate to death. In the absence of all sensory stimuli one cannot fathom what it means notto be. When there is nothing to lose, one cannot imagine what it means to lose one’s World for ever. There is nothing within the immanent processes of Being that attests itsBeing-towards-the-end. Only as social, ontic Being-in-the-world can one gain awareness of the possibility of authentically comporting one’s self towards one’s death. This awareness, however, is not clearly demonstrable. Apodictic certainty of my own death isnot rooted in hearing about or even observing others die but is found in anxiety. Inanxiety ‘Dasein finds itself face to face with the “nothing” of the possible impossibility of its existence’ (BT, p. 310). Anxiety discloses that Dasein’s existence is temporary. To be is to be anxious because to be is to die. And if one can authentically or inauthentically be-in-the-world one can also authentically or inauthentically die.

Moreover, my mortality can have meaning for me only in the framework of limits.These limits are there because of others. For example, I can contemplate the worldwithout me: others without myself. An authentic relation to one’s death does not require individual isolation. It is a mode of Being-in-the-world and hence also of Being-with-others (see BT, p. 308).

One’s authentic relation towards one’s death does not exist in a vacuum; it assumes Being-with. One chooses one’s ownness ‘among the factical possibilities’ (ibid.) within one’s world. To choose authentic ownness meaningfully and freely one must prefer it to the inauthentic modes of relating to one’s self. One must consider others’ selves and other (inauthentic) ways of Being. Authentic acceptance of one’s death liberates one from losing one’s self in the inauthentic illusions of the anyone. Heidegger claims that‘freedom towards death’ (ibid., p. 311) is freedom to be authentic. The possibility of one’s ownmost sense of selfhood requires the possibility of losing one’s own self in the everyday public. But death calls us back from this loss.

It is important to stress that freedom from the inauthentic modes does not mean freedom from concerned solicitude and authentic Being-with-one-another. Authentic Being-towards-death and detachment from the anyone does not isolate Dasein or make it unsocial. On the contrary:

authentic Being-one’s-self does not detach Dasein from its world, nor does it isolate it so that it becomes a free-floating ‘I’…. [it] brings the Self right into its current concernful Being-alongside…and pushes it into solicitous Being with Others.

(BT, p. 344)

Only a Dasein that is truly itself can be a truly concerned lover, spouse, colleague orfriend. Freedom from inauthentic modes of Being towards death, by individualizingDasein, makes self-possession possible. Far from leading to isolation, it creates theconditions for genuine sociability. Authentic dying enables me to open myself to theoption of being authentically bound to others, of caring about them, say, as those whowill survive.

Furthermore, Heidegger nowhere says that one can become authentic only in the mode of Being-towards-death. Granted, he holds that one reaches the most ‘authentic certainty’


in facing one’s death, but this does not in itself preclude the possibility of authenticchoices that have nothing to do with dying. When Heidegger envisages authentic life-patterns in reference to Being-with-one-another he does not necessarily presuppose dying. Still, death is decisive for authenticity, for several reasons.

First, death plays a significant role within Heidegger’s inquiry into the meaning of Being. For one way to explore what it means to be is to investigate what it means not to be. Analysis of the meaning of one’s death shows it to be that possibility in which one’s selfhood is most forcefully revealed. If authenticity is the sense of one’s Being, in death one reaches the culmination of one’s potential for authentic Being. Moreover, truly tocomprehend certain phenomena, one must consider them as wholes (BT, p. 348). This is especially true of authentic Being: what is authentic must be finite since one cannot ownand grasp an infinite process or entity. Death enters life to conclude it, making possibleits adequate explication. Hence, only Being-towards-death can be fully meaningful and authentic. Each time we entertain the possibility of dying we undertake an assessment ofour Being. In our anticipation we define our existence.

Further, death highlights our reasons for adopting an inauthentic mode of Being-in-the-world. It is, indeed, the crucial boundary situation, for it is universally imminent, unlikeother extraordinary circumstances that might befall us. Only death is inescapable. It isneither esoteric nor exotic. Everyone is equally concerned about and personally involvedin Being-towards-death; hence we must all choose between inauthenticity and authenticity—there is no way out. To be is to be anxious, but to be also means to die. One dies one’s life but does not live one’s death. The most acutely felt anxiety is that whicharises in the face of imminent death. To evade this unbearable ‘state of mind’ various ploys are resorted to. Inauthenticity is a formidable defence mechanism. By distractingmyself from my ownness, by becoming an object among other objects, I try to beoblivious of my coming death. To escape my Being-towards-death, I try, by being inauthentic, not to live my own life. Suppressing awareness of my imminent death, I alsohide from the significance of my life, and refrain from taking chances, from realizing mypossibilities. To be afraid of death and not to accept this anxiety courageously is to fearlife and jettison authenticity. One is not one’s self because to be one’s own self is to acknowledge the possibility of not being at all. One cannot die one’s life when one’s life is not one’s own. One tends to inauthenticity not only because authenticity makes oneanxious about one’s responsibility for one’s self in-the-world, but also because it appears an easy escape from anxiety in the face of death. But such defence mechanisms collapsewith the awareness of impending death, forcing one to ask oneself: ‘What does it mean for me not to be?’ Since one cannot grasp nothing, one turns to the question of authenticity: ‘What does it mean for me to be?’ This puts the questioner in touch with hersense of ownness, with her authentic Being.

Yet another role played by death is in highlighting the unavoidable clash between theindividual’s sense of Being and the inauthentic ethos of the anyone. The statistical anyone ‘never dies because it cannot die’ (BT, p. 477). As an active participant in theethos of everydayness, one cannot fully be in command of one’s Being. Only an event which severs the bond with the anyone can set authenticity in motion. Being-towards-death is exactly such an event. It releases Dasein from the anyone but not, of course, from Being-in-the-world. As a result, the everyday public works hard to conceal


authentic Being-towards-death, as it threatens to shatter the widely accepted illusions of the prevailing ethos and its elaborate schemes for fleeing death, such as‘tranquillization’ (ibid., p. 298) and regarding death as solely for others, that is, as anobjective entity present-at-hand for observation. The most vigorous clash between the will to authenticity and the inauthentic anyone is conducted under the shadow of death.By not permitting ‘the courage for anxiety in the face of death’, the anyone does not permit the courage to be authentic.

Finally, by revealing the clash between my death and the ethos of the anyone, death also discloses Dasein’s will, an essential aspect of authentic Being:

Our everyday falling evasion in the face of death is an inauthentic Being-towards-death. But inauthenticity is based on the possibility of authenticity. Inauthenticity characterizes a kind of Being into which Dasein can divert itself and has for the most part always diverted itself; but Dasein does not necessarily and constantly have to divert itself into this kind of Being. Because Dasein exists, it determines its own character as the kind of entity it is.15

Like Nietzsche’s Übermensch, Heidegger’s authentic Dasein is the author of its ‘own character’. The voluntarism of authenticity is suppressed by publicness. Dasein is almost reduced to impotence in the face of the anyone, which forces itself on Dasein, seducing it into giving up its authentic ownness. The ethos of the anyone is so persuasive andpervasive that only death can ‘wrench’ one from its domination (BT, p. 307). Loss of authenticity can, however, be ‘reversed’ (ibid., p. 312) by a firm decision to stand up to itand not yield to its seductions. Being-towards-death enables one to do this mosteffectively. Because death is ‘distinctively impending’, we are forced to decide if we are to attain our authentic selves or lose them before the factual event of our dying. Again, it is not the case that one can only become authentic as Being-towards-death; rather, one can most easily attain authenticity in one’s attitude to one’s ‘ownmost’ death. One can be authentic in one’s relations to significant others, for example, but here one cannot depend solely on one’s will, but must take into account the other as well. One is, however, freerto shape one’s attitude to one’s death, since one’s dying is ‘irrevocably non-relational’ and cannot be ‘outstripped’. This is less true of other relations to one’s self, such as self-love or self-image, for in these attitudes the element of anxiety is missing. The anxietyone feels in facing death must be accepted authentically. The voluntaristic aspect of thestruggle is most pronounced in facing death and less so in the context of self-image, self-love, etc. The dimension of will makes authenticity possible, allowing ‘impassioned freedom towards death—a freedom which has been released from the Illusions of the “anyone”, and which is factical, certain of itself, and anxious’ (BT, p. 311). This explains Heidegger’s contention that, unlike the negative phenomenon portrayed in the psychiatricliterature, anxiety ‘liberates’ one for authenticity (ibid., p. 395).

Being is an indefinite process of actualizing possibilities. To comport one’s self authentically through this process is to accept it as sheer possibility. From the point ofview of authenticity, possibility is more important than actuality, which is onticallytainted by inauthentic modes. The more firmly one grasps one’s death ‘as the possibility of the impossibility’ (ibid., p. 307), the more death becomes ‘Dasein’s ownmost


possibility’ (ibid.). Authentic Being is attained by keeping one’s death at bay: as non-actualized possibility. The more real this possibility becomes, the better one understandsone’s self as that possibility towards-death, and the less one is affected by inauthentic interpretations of one’s dying.

The question might be asked: ‘How do I know that I am anxious about death if anxietyby its very nature lacks a definite object?’ What essentially lacks an object, in fact, is myauthentic Being and my Being-towards-not-Being. Death is not an entity ‘which is ready-to-hand or present-at-hand, but a possibility of Dasein’s Being’ (ibid., p. 305). It is not a phenomenon accessible to the inquiring mind; only the anticipation of death can bescrutinized. Authenticity lacks any definite object or content (ibid., p. 311) because it isthe very process of owning one’s self, of relating oneself to that pure possibility of Being. Death is the ideal means for assessing what cannot be directly per-ceived. As in searching for authenticity, so in anticipating death, the ‘how’ becomes the ‘what’. How one accepts one’s death becomes the ‘what’ of one’s life. One cannot fully own one’s sense of life, without owning (viz. anticipating) one’s death, because authentic Being, as final,necessarily includes dying. Hence to be authentic is to be anxious about one’s death without fleeing in the face of one’s anxiety, to expect it courageously without denial. Onecan be anxious in the face of one’s authenticity but not fearful of it, because fear always has a definite object. Authenticity, as sheer possibility, is indefinite and functions as aregulative ideal. This ideal can affect us profoundly, transforming our attitude towardsour own Being.

Heidegger stresses death as an exclusive expression of ownness and hence as able toexpress and shape authenticity. But does he not overemphasize the seemingly trivial factthat everyone dies their own death and that ‘no one can take the Other’s dying away from him’ because ‘death is in every case mine’ (ibid., p. 284)? Is this unique to death? Whatabout self-love, self-perception, and so on, or even loving, feeling and understanding? As intentional processes, all seem mine no less than my dying. Is it that by falling into thepublic realm of the anyone, my feeling of self, and all these intentional processes thatconstitute this self, are no longer mine, since I do not shape them freely? But this is alsotrue of inauthentic Being-towards-death, the very notion of which presupposes that myBeing-towards-death is not mine. So in what sense is my death uniquely mine?

One answer seems to be that death uniquely challenges the constitution of my world byreference to the future. More concretely, however, the exclusiveness of death has to dowith the extreme anxiety that facing death evokes in us. We are almost irresistiblytempted to flee from it, but if we manage to overcome this urge, we emerge in firmpossession of our selves. Dying is the ultimate test: if one can authentically hold on toone’s self and freely face its demise, one can act authentically in other, less taxing, circumstances. Death is not the only authentic mode, but it can be the most revealing. Infacing death one’s authenticity is maximally disclosed, because the forces which work tosuppress it are so very formidable.

Heidegger’s analysis of guilt and the ‘voice of conscience’ is relevant here, since it discloses two far-reaching ramifications of his treatment of authenticity: (1) guilt and conscience are unmistakable indicators of the potential for authentic Being within therealm of inauthentic everydayness. They attest the fact that authenticity is nevercompletely sup-pressed by living within society, and hence, that it is indeed attainable;


(2) guilt shows that authenticity, far from undermining society, is constitutive ofmorality.

The experience of guilt reveals the self in the full poignancy of its mineness, for the wish to own one’s self indicates conscience. The radical responsibility of owning my selfis fraught with conscience and hence with guilt: ‘Dasein is essentially guilty’ (BT, p, 353) because it is ‘essentially something which can be authentic’ (ibid., p. 68). Moreover, grounds for Being-guilty are amply provided by everydayness, which seduces us intobetraying our authentic sense of responsibility for our selves. Since most of the time,even one who is determined to secure authenticity is lost in the anyone, self-betrayal is a common phenomenon of public everydayness. Hence guilt, by afflicting us, indicates thatwe can be authentic.

Dasein is always guilty because Dasein’s Being is not God’s Being, that is, it is never completely actualized. Each choice (say possibility x over possibility y or z) dooms it to ‘notness’ (Nichtigkeit). The ability to be authentic is also Dasein’s ability to be inauthentic. But when Dasein attains authenticity, when it owns its self and disowns thenotselves, has its guilt been overcome? No. Because of its finitude, Dasein is always guilty. Authenticity is to be preferred, though, because by commitment to one’s finite ownness, one accepts the eventuality of guilt. To accept guilt is to accept oneself asalways responsible for one’s own self. The attempt to escape this fundamentalresponsibility by falling is of no avail.

One never feels guilty about, say, developing diabetes. It is not of one’s making, so one is not responsible and no guilt accrues. But when one does feel guilty, it is because of thereal possibility of becoming authentic. Only transgression of a genuine possibility leadsone to feel guilt and to attempt to relieve this guilt by establishing an ethic whichsuppresses the will to authenticity. Yet such an ethic need not prevail. By acknowledgingone’s finite ownness, one accepts responsibility and the eventuality of guilt. Attempting to escape by falling, one is no better off, for falling is not a viable solution to guilt andanxiety. Even within the depths of fallenness the call to authenticity is never completelysuppressed. Falling makes the sense of guilt more acute, by attesting the attempt to fleeresponsibility for one’s self. Thus Heidegger’s drama of authenticity develops as follows:I first hear ‘a call’ (ibid., p. 314) to be authentic. I owe it to myself to own my self. I feelresponsible and, in response, attempt to satisfy this call but, failing to do so, feel guilty. Guilt thus attests my primordial search for authenticity (ibid., p. 354).

This ‘call’ ‘appeals solely to that Self which…is in no other way than Being-in-the-world (ibid., p. 318). It is also heard by those who have already fallen into the world ofthe anyone. Thus authenticity is not a permanent mode of Dasein: it is a fluctuating state of mind, arrived at through an ongoing struggle against the pull of the public world.Given the powerful inauthentic elements which we necessarily encounter in the worldand within ourselves, ‘authentic resoluteness’ is not just a momentary pathos or event or even an ultimate choice, but a resolve, which keeps ‘repeating itself’ (ibid., p. 355). By such perseverance the fallen Dasein is able to reach a state in which ‘one’s very lostness in irresoluteness gets undermined’ (ibid., p. 356).

The call to authenticity is ‘an abrupt arousal…it reaches him who wants to be broughtback (ibid., p. 316). Only one who, despite fallenness, is already in search of authenticitycan ‘hear’ and respond to the call of conscience which emerges from the anyone. Dasein


can hear because even in its most fallen state not the whole Dasein is immersed in the they-self: ‘the caller is unfamiliar to the everyday they-self; it is something like an alienvoice’ (ibid., p. 321). It follows that Dasein is ‘at the same time both the caller and the one to whom the appeal is made’ (ibid., p. 320). Dasein is both authentic and inauthentic: its authentic dimension calls, its inauthentic dimension is called upon. The unsuppressedpotentiality for authentic Being within the inauthentic realm hears and responds. Even asfallen-in-the-world, Dasein is able to, and hence must, be authentic. The very phenomena of conscience, guilt and call attest the fact that the domination of the public is never sototal as to prevent the call from being heard by that dimension of the self which is nottotally obliterated: ‘The irresoluteness of the “anyone” remains dominant notwithstanding, but it cannot impugn resolute existence’ (ibid., p. 345).

Authenticity, as Dasein’s ‘resoluteness’ to heed the call to ownness, is possible evenwithin the adverse circumstances of inauthenticity, because ontologically authenticity isthe most fundamental and primordial existential. Heidegger’s ontology solves the question of the social viability of authenticity. Proximally and for the most part’ Daseinis inauthentic within the social context. This does not mean, however, that it cannot beraised from this fallen state into authentic-Being-in-the-world, especially when the call to authenticity is amplified by Heidegger’s enticing presentation.

But Heidegger goes further, claiming that owing to the necessary interaction amongBeings-in-the-world, any individual’s authenticity functions as a call to others to strive to become authentic as well: ‘When Dasein is resolute, it can become the “conscience” of Others. Only by authentically Being-their-Selves in resoluteness can people authentically be with one another’ (ibid., p. 344). By uniting the fragmented self into one authentic whole, Dasein inspires others to follow its example.

Heidegger’s ontology of authenticity has yet another function: it tries to show that guilt, and hence authenticity, are fundamental presuppositions for the existence of anymorality at all. Heidegger dissolves the clash between authenticity and ethics by makingauthenticity a necessary condition for morality via the phenomenon of guilt. Theprimordial search for self becomes the basis for responsibility and guilt and, hence, formoral standards: ‘only because Dasein is guilty in the basis of its Being…is conscience possible’ (ibid., p. 332). Here Heidegger differs from Nietzsche, who tried to anchor the phenomenon of Schuld (guilt or debt) in socio-economic relations, and Freud, for whom guilt resulted from breaching the moral code of ‘totem and taboo’. Nietzsche and Freud thus consider the moral context prior to the emergence of guilt. Heidegger reverses thisapproach,16 claiming that ‘the idea of guilt must…be detached from relationship to anylaw or “ought”’ (ibid., p. 328) since ‘Being-guilty does not first result from anindebtedness (Verschuldung), but on the contrary, indebtedness becomes possible only “on the basis” of a primordial Being-guilty’ (ibid., p. 329). Here Heidegger is notsuggesting a kind of secularized doctrine of original sin. His conception of guilt,intimately connected with his notion of primordial authentic selfhood, is ontological innature. To be authentic is to be guilty, because it is to own one’s self and to be responsible for its mode of existence, including falling. Feeling guilty attests one’s potential for authenticity and one’s responsibility for recovering one’s sense of self should it be lost.

‘Being-guilty’ is ‘being responsible for’ one’s self, ‘being the author of one’s self as


well as ‘being the occasion for’ the authenticity of other selves (ibid., p. 327). The ideal of authenticity ‘can regulate the very manner in which we are with one other publicly’. Thus authenticity is not just a regulative ideal, but the constitutive ideal for a moralityaccording to which each of us is responsible for our own sense of selfhood and for thewell-being, that is, the authentic Being, of others. This ethic could be realized in a social framework of ‘authenti-cally bound’ relations wherein public betrayal of individualselves would be minimal. Just as the ideal of psychoanalysis is a society in whichinstincts are repressed as little as possible, yielding relatively few intensively guilty andneurotic persons, Heidegger’s ideal of an authentically orientated society is one that will minimize damage to its members’ authenticity.

But if authentic Being-towards-death is the climax of Dasein’s authenticity, how can it serve as the basis for an authentic society? Is it not over-individualistic? The same is true of one’s personal sense of guilt. Anticipating such questions, and his above-mentioned critics, Heidegger stresses that authentic ‘anticipatory resoluteness’ in the face of death is not ‘a kind of seclusion in which one flees the world’ (ibid., pp. 357–8); it is not confined to one’s resoluteness towards one’s own Being and self. On the contrary, it enables one tocope with the world firmly and positively. ‘Individualization’ is that ‘authentic Being-one’s-Self’ (ibid., pp. 369–70) which enables one to take a significant stand. A genuinemorality is the province of individuals who have managed to acquire ‘power over [their] existence’ (ibid., p. 357). Slaves do not need morality, which presupposes the freedom of the self to Be, authentically and responsibly. Since Being-towards-death individualizes, making possible authenticity and freedom, it brings about the conditions fundamental toethics. Insofar as anticipatory resoluteness in the face of death leads to the ‘dispersing’ of ‘all fugitive Self-concealments’, it makes possible authentic individuals who canestablish an ethic of authenticity which promotes, secures and enhances that very basisfor a genuine morality.

VI

Authenticity does not consist solely of courageous resoluteness in the face of death, for italso entails a special relationship with one’s individual past and historical heritage. Anauthentic Being must appropriate its tradition in an authentic ‘coming-back’ which secures its authentic looking-forward. One must accommodate one’s past to have a present. The discussion of time and history that concludes the treatment of authenticity inBeing and Time highlights the primacy of this ideal in Heidegger’s thought. Indeed, the issue of temporality is raised precisely (BT, p. 424) to further the discussion of authenticity and resolve its problems.

The introduction of the notion of temporality provides a more complete explanation of the call to authenticity from inauthentic everydayness. The call does not stem solely fromthe irrepressible, authentic part of Dasein, but also emerges from its past and history: ‘the call is from afar unto afar’ (ibid., p. 316). One hears and responds to the call because it comes from within one’s Being and is amplified by one’s past and history. But to hear


and understand this call from the past, one must already be authentic. Moreover, one’s past and history must be authentic to deliver such a call. To break out of this viciouscircle, Heidegger spoke, after Being and Time, of ‘Grace’ from above (not just from ‘afar’) and of ‘God’ as uniquely able to ‘save’ us from inauthenticity.

Here, however, the concept of the individual’s historicality is intended to emphasize the active dimensions of authentic Being. This balances the weight accorded to moodsand such states of mind as anxiety and guilt. For moods are passive and uncontrollable—to base authentic life exclusively upon them would clearly undermine the whole project.By introducing temporality, essential to the ongoing struggle to secure one’s sense of ownness, including the ownness of one’s past and history, Heidegger counters the passiveand emotive elements of authenticity discussed thus far. The struggle between authenticand inauthentic modes of Being as future possibilities of Dasein takes place in time. The idea that one has to win one’s past in order to win one’s future, that one must actively appropriate one’s heritage, making it one’s own, highlights the active Dasein. For Daseininherits its past not only by ‘accident’ but also with authentic ‘resolve’; it ‘choose[s] it’ freely (ibid., p. 435). One’s heritage is not passively handed from generation to generation, but has potential for willingly chosen reinterpretation and appropriation. Thisactive element in Dasein’s authentic resoluteness contrasts with the essential passivity of inauthentic modes of existing: ‘Everydayness determines Dasein even when it has notchosen the “anyone” for its “hero”’ (SZ; p. 371, my translation). For the most part we resolutely choose neither our selves nor the heritage into which we are thrown.Consequently, inauthenticity ensures the rarity of the authentic present, that ‘moment of vision’ when existence gains mastery over the everyday but can ‘never extinguish it’ (ibid.). The victory of authenticity is never final and may be limited to a moment (BT, p. 387), but it is always possible, because to be is to be in time, to create and recreateone’s past, heritage and future in an ‘active ecstasis’ and in ‘resolute rapture’ (ibid.). Tempor-ality is the source of Dasein’s self-constancy. ‘The “who” of Dasein’ (ibid., p. 427) lies in its past and future as well as in the past and future of its community.

The issue of historicality and temporality makes it even clearer that Heidegger sees Dasein as essentially existing with others, and hence as being able to be, and not just to die, authentically within its community. Dasein cannot achieve individual authenticityapart from the community. The heritage which Dasein authentically appropriates is not merely its individual history but rather the heritage of the entire people, folk or‘generation’ it belongs to (ibid., p. 436). By firmly fixing authenticity in Dasein’s wider socio-historical context, Heidegger adds an important dimension to the more personal focus of authentic dying.

Any ethos has its own history. By appropriating its values and accepting itsresponsibilities, I make this particular ethos into my own, becoming an authentic Beingwithin its framework. This appropriation of a given ethos leads from so-called objective history, constituted by a uniform succession of events in objective/chronological time, tothe historicality of authentically existing Dasein in-the-world. Authentic time of one’s own making is constituted by Dasein’s ‘leaping’ from and into moments of authenticity: it is time created and freely recreated. This move from history to historicality parallels theshift from the ethos of objectivity to authenticity.

To be authentic is to own one’s self. But one cannot do so completely without also


owning one’s past and one’s heritage, because one’s self is an integral part of the history of one’s community. Alienated self which is estranged from its community cannot become fully authentic. The view held by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche that any given ethicand society are potential enemies of authentic life is diametrically opposed toHeidegger’s intuition of what it means to be authentic. Ethos, history and society are theconstitutive elements of authenticity.

It follows from Heidegger’s discussion of historicality that any ethic authenticallyappropriated by one’s self is constitutive of one’s authenticity. This, however, is qualified by his distinction between ‘inauthentic historicality’ and ‘authentic historicality’ (ibid., pp. 433ff.). The former combines an ‘evasion’ of choice and resoluteness regarding one’s future as Being-towards-death with ‘forgetfulness’ of one’s folk past and heritage. Authentic historicality is indifferent to specific content or values of one’s past or present, and relates to the mode of referring to them. Each Dasein, by its own acts of appropriation, by ‘revering the repeatable possibilities of existence’ (ibid., p. 443) recre-ates and owns its historical ethos, which becomes the ‘sole authority’ for its authentic Being. Here we are reminded of Kierkegaard’s notion of authenticity as the passionatecommitment to an authority which becomes sole author of one’s biography. But instead of Kierkegaard’s authoritative God, Heidegger’s authority is the historical dimension of the people in which one is rooted. One is historically authentic when one creates one’s own history by utilizing and recreating one’s past and the past of one’s people, projecting them with anticipatory resoluteness towards one’s future. If ‘resoluteness constitutes the loyalty of existence to its own Self’ (ibid.), authenticity is the loyalty of one’s self to its own past, heritage and ethos. The sum of the many authentic resolutenesses of individualDaseins in their personal lives, and the whole network of such authentically bound individual Daseins inthe-world, constitutes the authentic historicality of one’s self and one’s society, folk or people: in short, of one’s authentic ethos.

Does this mean that all moralities are equally valid as far as authenticity is concerned?No, for any ethic that militantly suppresses authenticity, which levels the living Daseininto a present-to-hand observable entity, a ready-to-hand object for the anyone’s manipulations and domination, is unacceptable. For example, a militaristic ethos whichadvocates subjugating other countries and eradicating their cultural heritage bysuppressing their history would be an antiauthentic ethos, since it prevents the inhabitants of the conquered land from owning and appropriating their historicality and heritage. Buteven within the militaristic society itself there is no possibility of authenticity.Authentically bound relations within such an aggressively taskorientated society arealmost a factical impossibility, because of the intrusion of the state into virtually everysocial unit. The state will aggressively attempt to own each Dasein’s Being, regarding it as an object to be used, instead of allowing each Dasein to realize its individual aim of owning its own Being. In spite of Heidegger’s personal affinity with Nazism, there isnothing in his notion of authenticity that provides sound philosophical underpinnings forregarding the Nazi attitude as authentic. Indeed, Heidegger’s own teachings on authenticity work against his support for the Nazi regime. In any event, because of thepurely a—political character of the ideal of authenticity as presented in Being and Time, Heidegger did not use it in speeches he made in support of Hitler when he was a rector ofthe University of Freiburg.17


The voluntaristic nature of Heidegger’s notion of authentic Being is underlined by the primacy of the future for the possibility of authenticity: ‘The primary meaning of existentiality is the future’ (ibid., p. 376). The distinction between the actively authentic mode of Being and passive inauthenticity is poignantly expressed by the languageHeidegger uses to distinguish the two modes in reference to the future: anticipating(Vorlaufen) the future as opposed to waiting for or expecting (Erwarten) it. One actively looks forward to and goes towards one’s authentic future by anticipating it in the present, but passively, even fatalistically, waits for the inauthentic future to draw near, letting ithappen, as it were. Anticipation of the future has an element of decisive resolutenessabout it which makes Dasein into agent and author of its self to come: ‘anticipationindicates that Dasein, existing authentically, lets itself come towards itself as its ownmostpotentiality-for-Being—that the future itself must first win itself’ (ibid., p. 386).

The primacy of the future for authenticity is also reflected in the Heideggerean concept of care (Sorge). Only Dasein can ask: ‘How should I Be? How should I exist: should I own my Being or let it be expropriated by everydayness? What is the meaning of thisBeing as compared with inauthentic Being?’ These questions attest my genuine concernfor my Being. In asking myself what I am, I am authentic Dasein. But these questions have meaning only when my future is visible in my present. Anticipatory resolutenessdirected towards the future attests the profound significance of the future in the pursuit ofauthenticity. One owns, creates and realizes one’s self in terms of its possibilities for the future.

The primacy of the future also comes to the fore when we recall that authenticity reaches its culmination in authentic Being-towards-death which is always ahead of us. Moreover, anxiety in the face of one’s eventual death, which is constitutive of one’s individuality, and hence also of one’s potential for appropriating one’s Being, ‘springs from the future of resoluteness’ (ibid., p. 395). Heidegger’s doctrine that possibility is ontologically prior to actuality is the key here. Authenticity reigns in the realm ofpossibilities not yet realized. The roots of authentic Being are in the future, becausepossibilities are never in the actual present. In other words, to Be is to be in time andhistory; it is to comport one’s self to one’s own Being in a time-consuming process of realizing one’s potential for authenticity.

Being moves towards authenticity in the future. Is Heidegger proposing a kind ofbiological model for authenticity? In saying that ‘origin always comes to meet us from the future’,18 is he asserting that our inborn potential for authentic Being is realized justas genes are actualized in an organic entity?

In support of this interpretation is the fact that Heidegger regards authenticity as ontologically prior to inauthentic modes of Being (BT, p. 68). Consistent with his assertion of the primacy of authenticity he states that ‘proximally and for the most part Dasein is not itself but is lost in the they-self, which is an existentiell modification of the authentic Self’ (ibid., p. 365). Every Dasein can be ontologically authentic; inauthenticityis only a modification of this primordial possibility. One must own one’s Being to be able to lose it in everyday concerns. Applying Young’s aphorism to Heidegger, we can saythat ‘we are born original, but proximally and for the most part die as copies’. Furthermore, because the authentic mode is always grounded in possibility, which isontologically prior to actuality, authenticity is always prior to inauthentic actuality. Thus


authenticity cannot be reduced to inauthenticity; it cannot be described in terms of, or as afunction of, inauthenticity.

Nevertheless, a simplistic biological interpretation of Heidegger’s notion of authenticity is unacceptable, because we refuse to ‘be seduced (verführen) into an intolerable and quite unphenomenological construction’ (ibid., p. 349). A bio-developmental model of authenticity posits the self as a kind of substance—soul which persists as an unchanging entity through the course of events on its way to self-realization. But Dasein is not a substantial Cartesian self: in inauthentic modes of Being we lose the self, cover it up, which would hardly be the case if it were an already-made substance or present-to-hand entity. The concept of substantial subject is limited to the ontic level and has no place in the ontological analysis of Dasein. Dasein is not an isolated subject in relation to an object but is that relation itself. It is the intentionalactivity that constitutes subject-object relations, making them transcendentally possible.In biology we witness the growth of a substance which is a certain kind of entity: anembryo or seed. A biological model implies a metaphysical sense of ‘essence’ as something that can be fully actualized. However, in ‘The Letter on Humanism’, arguing against Sartre’s slogan ‘Existence precedes essence’, Heidegger says that his notion of ‘Being’ has nothing in common with this phrase, because it is prior to this distinction of potentiality and actuality.

So should we interpret Heidegger’s idea of authenticity in terms of the artistic-creative model? His notion of authenticity calls upon us to comport ourselves to Being. Here thecreative activity of every Dasein proves helpful. When one is creating, one concentrates on one’s own work, ideas, projects, etc. Only as a homo faber does one feel at home; one is concerned about one’s work. To create is to reflect upon one’s own ideas, which presupposes a distancing from everydayness and its inauthentic ‘hubbub’. Yet, any kind of creation requires a social and cultural context. It is as a creator that one can be anauthentic Being-in-the-world. Moreover, by temporalizing itself Dasein creates itself towards its death. The coming to Be of Dasein’s ownness, as ontologically temporal, doesnot take place in time, which always refers to the ontic world. Dasein creates a time saturated with significance.

Actually, the biological and the artistic models for authenticity are synthesized inHeidegger. From the ontological perspective, authenticity is a creative self-and-world-referential, intentional activity; ontically, authentic Dasein actualizes its possibilities in-the-world and within its ‘situation’ (ibid., pp. 346–7) in accordance with a biological model. However, even these ontic possibilities are of one’s making ‘through resoluteness and in it’ (ibid., p. 346). Thus authenticity is the fundamental starting-point and, in the rare cases of authentic Being-towards-death, also the end-point. It is the dynamic activity of making one’s Being one’s own, by a process in which one may also lose it through aninauthentic modification. The tension between Nietzsche’s two prescriptions for authentic life, ‘Be what you are’ and ‘Create your own self’, is resolved by Heidegger’s ontological synthesis, rephrased by me as follows:

Own your Being by creating your self and by appropriating your heritage. Return to your self and its historicality and accept them anxiously by overcoming the temptation to lose them in the distraction of everydayness.


It would be a mistake to hold, with some interpreters,19 that the authentic individual is principally concerned with such morbid and intimately personal issues as guilt, death,disillusionment and sober anxiety. Possessing one’s self within the social context in which ‘Dasein becomes free’ brings ‘an unshakable joy’ (ibid., p. 358). In this passage of Being and Time we find a rare instance of strong emotion colouring Heidegger’s ordinarily stern pedantic teaching. He clearly intends to evoke joy and a sense ofauthentic liberation in his readers.

This ‘joyous’ mode is rooted in voluntarism.20 But free employment of creative will presupposes the agency that exercises it—the subject. Hence Dasein, in resolutely creating or recreating its own authenticity, is actually a subject ‘taking action’ towards its own self and death within the world, where it can enjoy genuine relations of beingauthentically bound with others. Yet from the ontological perspective, Dasein cannot be an active subject or self, but only an intentional ‘relation of subject to object’ (JLH, p. 229) underlying (sub-jectum) the possibility of any experience of a self. This self, we aretold, is not a thing or a subject, but a way in which Dasein exists (cf. BT, p. 312). It seems that Heidegger’s ontological approach clashes with authenticity in the sense of the courageous will to own one’s Being, to relate resolutely to one’s death and to appropriate one’s historicality.

Adequate ontological investigation requires validity, certainty and ‘assurance’ (ibid., p. 69), that is, it needs accepted criteria of truth. Furthermore, to articulate the findings ofphenomenologically oriented ontology one needs language and thus must rely on itsreferential reliability. This is especially so from the point of view of the human Dasein, who attempts to gain authenticity by adopting an articulated notion of authenticity. Yetall conventional and objective accounts of truth are irrelevant to authenticity understoodas a primordial and preverbal state of mind or of Being. Heidegger voiced this insight inBeing and Time, speaking of the existential import of silence. The voice of conscience or the call to authenticity ‘discourses solely and constantly in the mode of keepingsilent’ (ibid., p. 318). Authenticity cannot ‘be tied up with an expectation of anything like a communication’ (ibid.). Ordinary language is immersed in ‘idle talk’ which binds Dasein to the crowd, conveying inauthentic meanings and covering up authentic ones. Hence, an ‘authentic Being-one’s Self’ must remain ‘silent’ (ibid., p. 370). It seems that one may live authentically in-the-world but cannot communicate to others this ownness.But if so what about Heidegger’s own writing? Is not his ontological interpretation,coming from within ontic everydayness and necessarily using the language of the anyone,suspect, as is its adequacy for disclosing authenticity? Heidegger asks himself thisquestion, rephrasing it as follows:

If historicality belongs to the Being of Dasein, then even inauthentic existing must be historical. What if it is Dasein’s inauthentic historicality that has directed our questioning…and has blocked off our access to authentic historicality?

(ibid., p. 439)

Clearly, this query can be applied to Heidegger’s entire ontological enterprise of explicating authentic Being, pursued as it is by a philosopher dwelling concretely within


the world, in the inauthentic realm of the anyone. Nietzsche acknowledged such anunavoidable circularity, saying that his entire explicative philosophy of power might wellbe thoroughly subjective, an expression of his own will to power; ‘well, so much the better’, he concluded.21 However, Nietzsche did not aspire to providing a validfundamental ontology. As a philosophizing human using everyday language Heideggercannot function as an atemporal, God’s-eye-view observer. Hence he should keep silent, following the advice he gave the authentic Dasein.

Underlying the whole problem is the distinction between pure ontology and everydayontic facticity. The correspondence between the two levels is ambiguous. Heideggerclaims that all pre-ontological, ordinary experiences have exact counterparts inontological phenomena and interpretations. But what exactly is the nature of the relationsbetween the ‘objectivity of an ontological analysis’ and the ‘everyday understanding’? Heidegger provides no concrete answer and is ‘satisfied with alluding to the essentialproblems’ (ibid., p. 336) generated by the distinction between the methodological and theontological level.

Even on the strictly ontological level, it is far from clear, as I argued above, that the authentic mode of Being is fundamental and primordial and that it alone is essential toDasein. For there are places where Heidegger claims that falling into inauthenticity is ‘an essential ontological structure of Dasein itself’ (ibid., p. 224; cf. p. 78) no less than theauthentic mode, and even hints that the latter is a derived mode of the former (ibid., p.168). Yet Heidegger’s basic exposition is in terms of such concepts as being lost, thrownness and fall, which presuppose an original fundamental state of affairs fromwhich one has fallen. Hence I prefer to regard authenticity as the primordial existential of Being, and inauthenticity as ‘an existentiell modification of the authentic Self’ (ibid., p. 365). Moreover, if inauthentic Being is as ontologically mine as authentic Being, there isno real difference, in this respect, between authentic and inauthentic Beings, and thus nocriterion to distinguish between them. Furthermore, should we endorse the interpretationthat inauthenticity is an essential phenomenon, it would follow that each of us is doomedby ontology to be an inauthentic self within-the-world. If inauthenticity is ‘structurally’ or essentially innate in Dasein, as Heidegger sometimes implies, (e.g. at BT, p. 70), how can Dasein become fully authentic? And if it cannot, how can Heidegger explicate its meaning phenomenologically as opposed to regarding it as a purely theoreticalconstruct—a stand he categorically rejects? If inauthenticity and authenticity are bothessential structures of Dasein, the transition within-the-world from one to the other remains inexplicable. Finally, if Dasein is doomed to inauthenticity, why does it notrealize this potentiality at once, rather than starting from authentic Being, which it mustlose?

My solution to these problems is to regard authenticity as the only fundamental, apriori and ontological mode of Dasein’s Being-in-the-world. At the ontological level Dasein is essentially authentic; it becomes inauthentic (though not completely or necessarily so) only at the ontic level. In other words, as long as we are concerned withthe fundamental explication of Dasein, we remain in the realm of authenticity, but at the ontic level ‘proximally and for the most part’ we encounter inauthentic manifestations of Dasein. This interpretation is preferred by Heidegger himself,22 who, in several passages, maintains that ‘everydayness’ is not a ‘distinctive possibility of Dasein’s existence’ but


only an ‘average way of existing, which has nothing conspicuous about it’ (ibid., p. 421). That is, everydayness, being a neutral, descriptive notion, is not identical withinauthenticity, which is a narrower phenomenon. Here we seem to have an ontologicalsolution to the problem of authenticity unsolved by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.Inauthenticity is not a necessary mode of Being within the social context. Thusauthenticity is ontically possible, as Heidegger implies in saying that ‘Everydayness is determinative for Dasein even when it has not chosen the “anyone” for its “hero”’ (ibid., p. 422). Resoluteness towards authenticity is not solipsistic and does not exempt theindividual from social responsibility. On the contrary, as we saw, authentic resolutenesspushes one into a solicitous Being with others. Heidegger’s view is communitarian, and even in his Marburg lectures he claims that authenticity is fully actualized only incommunity. For ‘in choosing itself Dasein really chooses precisely its Being-with-Others’.23

Alas, the above-mentioned shortcomings subsequently led Heidegger to abandon thevoluntaristic elements of authenticity, to the point where the very concept of humanDasein was engulfed in the wider notion of Being, with its theological undertones. He began to avoid such concepts as ‘phenomenology’ and ‘Dasein’ in favour of the less anthropocentric and more cosmic idea of Ereignis. He described authenticity in terms of passivity, regarding it as a gift, as something which befell an individual unexpectedly, as an outcome of grace from above, etc.24 This amounts to abandonment of the intuitionsabout authenticity he previously shared with earlier thinkers.

Authenticity is not a mode of Being in general but of Being a human. Thus, withoutDasein there can be no authenticity as a mode of Being of human beings. Hence close analysis of Heidegger’s later writings is not germane to our discussion. To be authentic isto be a struggling agent trying resolutely to overcome passivity in her or his life. It is theproject of winning self-possession, of creating and owning one’s self within the situation as interpreted by the human agent. Passivity and authenticity are incompatible. FromHeidegger’s later perspective, authenticity is no longer human failure or achievement butdestiny or fate (Geschick, moira). This Protestant attitude to authenticity severely diminishes the active and spontaneous freedom of creation which characterized theearlier ideal of authenticity. It also denies all human and ethical import. Yet even beforethis abandonment of authenticity as an attainable ideal, as an ethical standard to beaspired to, Heidegger’s attempt at ontologizing authenticity was of little help in fosteringits implementation. It was fraught with problems, problems Jean-Paul Sartre tried to overcome by turning away from a phenomenological ontology of authenticity to politics.Was Sartre’s version more amenable to implementation?

Notes

1 Being and Time, trans. J.Macquarrie and E.Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p.35. Most page references will be to this English translation (henceforth BT), although revisions have been made where necessary. Occasionally the German edition is consulted:


Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1963) (henceforth SZ). 2 Heidegger’s Preface to W.J.Richardson’s Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought

(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), p. xx. 3 ‘The Word of Nietzsche: “God is Dead”’, in The Question concerning Technology, and

Other Essays, trans. W.Lovitt (New York: Garland, 1977), p. 58. 4 Cf., e.g., BT, p. 348, where Heidegger claims that the phenomenon of authenticity is the

bridge to the general ontological question of the meaning of Being. In what follows I use thecustomary translations, ‘authenticity’ and ‘authentic’, for Heidegger’s Eigentlichkeit and eigentlich. This helps bring Heidegger closer to thinkers on authenticity with whom his philosophy is intimately connected. Moreover, other English (and perhaps more literal)translations of these terms, such as ‘ownedness’, ‘self-possessedness’ and ‘appropriation’ either do not make for smooth English or do not cover the range of meanings associated withHeidegger’s use of these notions. As to Dasein (literally ‘Being-there’), Heidegger follows more or less the everyday usage of this term, denoting that kind of Being that belongs topersons (cf. SZ, p. 12). Since no satisfactory English equivalent is commonly accepted, andsince this term is quite familiar to English-speaking readers of Heidegger, I leave ituntranslated.

5 As, e.g., M.Grene, who writes that ‘the investigation of personal existence is ancillary to thesearch for Being itself’: Martin Heidegger (London: Bowes & Bowes, 1957), p. 12.

6 What Is Called Thinking?, trans. Fred D.Wieck and G.J.Gray (New York: Harper & Row,1968), p. 79.

7 ‘Letter on Humanism’, in Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. D.F. Krell (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), trans. F.A.Capuzzi (henceforth LH), pp. 193, 205.

8 The Piety of Thinking: Essays by Martin Heidegger, trans. J.G.Hart and J.C.Maraldo (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), p. 20; cf. ‘ontology functions only as a corrective formally pointing out the ontic’ (ibid., p. 19).

9 An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. R.Manheim (New York: Doubleday, 1961), pp. 9, 10. 10 K. Harries, ‘Heidegger as a Political Thinker’, in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy, ed.

M.Murray (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1978), p. 307, and R.Rorty,Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 113.Thus Heidegger’s statement in his essay ‘Thinker as Poet’ that ‘what is spoken is never, and in no language, what is said’ (Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. and ed. A.Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 11) also applies to Being and Time.

11 Concrete examples abound in his writings; see e.g., LH, where we find an ironic admonition against the ‘inevitable misinterpretations’ of his doctrine which attribute to it anti-humanistic, anti-logical, anti-moral, anti-transcendental and nihilistic connotations: ‘Because…we everywhere speak against all that humanity deems high and holy our philosophy teaches anirresponsible and destructive “nihilism”. For what is more “logical” than that…mirroring…what one believes he knows already before he reads’ (LH, pp. 225–6).

12 The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. A.Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982) (henceforth BPP), p. 170.

13 Grene, Martin Heidegger, p. 14 et passim. 14 BT, pp. 164, 166, 220. Here and elsewhere I have retranslated das Man as ‘the anyone’ which

also includes myself. I thus reject the Robinson and Macquarrie translation of das Man as ‘the they’, which implies ‘their’ inauthenticity in contrast to my seemingly authentic sense ofselfhood.

15 BT, pp. 303–4; my emphasis. This and other passages prevent me from endorsingZimmerman’s claim that everydayness, ‘our usual tendency to conceal things, to regard them


superficially…is intrinsic to us; it cannot be escaped’ (M.Zimmerman, Eclipse of the Self: The Development of Heidegger’s Concept of Authenticity (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981), p. 44).

16 See Golomb, Nietzsche’s Enticing Psychology of Power, pp. 304–21. 17 Cf. Harries, ‘Heidegger as a Political Thinker’, a balanced and concise analysis of the

relations between Heidegger’s philosophy and his ‘brief aberration’—his warm embrace of National Socialism. Cf. V.Farias, Heidegger and Nazism (Philadelphia, Pa: Temple University Press, 1987), who claims that no connection is evident between Heidegger’s theoretical philosophy and his political involvement.

18 ‘A Dialogue on Language’, p. 10. 19 Grene, for example, claims that ‘ “being to death” is the sole content and meaning of

existential authenticity, as Heidegger makes it’ (‘Authenticity: An Existential Virtue’, Ethics, 62 (1952), 266–74. E.Levinas also seems to hold such a view, saying that ‘the fundamental relation with being, in Heidegger, is not the relationship with the Other, but with death,where everything that is non-authentic in the relationship with the Other is denounced, sinceone dies alone’ (Ethics and Infinity, trans. R.A.Cohen (Pittsburgh, Pa: Duquesne UniversityPress, 1985), p. 58).

20 Thus Zimmerman is right in claiming that ‘Being and Time uses voluntaristic language to describe Dasein’s resolve [and] courageous will’ (Eclipse of the Self, p. 40; cf. pp. 19, 129). For an opposing view, see C. B.Guignon, ‘Heidegger’s “Authenticity” Revisited’, Review of Metaphysics, 38 (1984), 321–39.

21 BGE, sec.22. 22 And by some interpreters. W.J.Richardson, for example, maintains that, at least in the second

division of Being and Time, Heidegger definitely ‘refers to authenticity as the “more primordial” phenomenon’ (Existential Epistemology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 44;cf. pp. 152–4). For a lucid analysis of the question, see Joan Stambaugh, ‘An Inquiry into Authenticity and Inauthenticity in Being and Time’, in Radical Phenomenology: Essays in Honor of Martin Heidegger, ed. J.Sallis (Atlantic Highlands, Nf: Humanities Press, 1978),pp. 153–61. Stambaugh concludes, as I do, that ‘the authentic is the fundamental level ofDasein and the inauthentic is simply a flight from authenticity, however prevalent thatinauthenticity might be’ (p. 160). Richardson denies this, claiming that ‘both authenticity and inauthenticity are fundamental modes of Being’ (Existential Epistemology, p. 50).

23 The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic (1928) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1984), p. 190.

24 See, e.g., ‘Letter on Humanism’, where Heidegger states that Dasein can exist only by the grace of Being; cf. ‘A Dialogue on Language’, p. 45. Zimmerman points out that as early ashis 1930s essay ‘On the Essence of Truth’ Heidegger began the shift from the active notionof authenticity as ‘self-appropriation to the notion of authenticity as beingappropriated’ (Eclipse of the Self, p. 231). For a lucid exposition of ‘The Mature Concept of Authenticity’ and the idea of Ereignis, see chapter 8 of Zimmerman’s book.


6 Sartre: from phenomenological ontology to psychoanalysis and

politics

Jean-Paul Sartre is the first thinker to supplement his philosophy of authenticity and badfaith1 with a call to direct political action. Ironically, the philosopher most intimately associated with the notion of authenticity and considered its most influential proponentwas deeply pessimistic about its viability. At one point in his conversations with BennyLévy, Sartre asserted that his work was ‘a failure’, seeing that it led to the ‘contradiction in Being and Nothingness’.2 He is referring to the unbridgeable gap between theauthenticity he aspired to and the disappointing ontological conclusions that follow fromhis theoretical premises.

When he realized that an ontological approach to authenticity could not bring about itssocial implementation, Sartre turned from phenomenological ontology to political actiondirected against the social conditions responsible for life-patterns manifesting bad faith. As he admits to Lévy,3 both his debate with Marxism and his political action aim atbringing about a society free of oppression in which there are no structural incentives forpeople to act in bad faith and to relate to each other as objects.

Using explicitly Kantian language, Sartre explains that his ultimate objective is topromote a ‘kingdom of ends’, where human beings ‘forbid themselves to use men as matter or as a means to an end’;4 a society of social ‘fusion’, whose members are both objects and subjects for each other. In his Notebooks, Sartre describes the ideal of authenticity as viable ‘within the city of ends’ (p. 500). Anticipating his later political writings, he designates as ‘the Apocalypse’ (ibid., pp. 1, 374, 413–14) the ‘moment’ at which a society of authentic individuals bonded into a harmonious group would emerge.Nonetheless, unlike Heidegger, Sartre rarely uses the term ‘authenticity’ in his published writings, preferring the more anthropological notion of ‘bad faith’. But ‘bad faith’ and ‘good faith’ are not simply synonymous with the opposition between inauthenticity andauthenticity, since they are also used to signify, among other things, our attitudes towardsthe ontological predicaments that make authenticity an unattainable ideal.

Sartre read Sein und Zeit both carefully and critically, then embarked on a kind ofKantian revolution against Heidegger. Just as Kant, with his critique of reason, ‘found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith’,5 Sartre proffered a


critique of the search for authenticity aimed at redirecting human effort from this ‘useless passion’ (I take this to also mean the wish to become as authentic as humanly possible) to politics.6 If Kant’s critique of absolute truth led to the ideal of personal truthfulness, Sartre’s ontology, in demonstrating the uselessness of the individual search forauthenticity, encourages us to take part in political action aimed at ‘a morality of revolution, in the sense that there is a revolution in…Kant’.7

Sartre’s ‘Copernican revolution’ against Heidegger starts with the fact that Heidegger denied that any particular ethic could be incompatible with authenticity. For Heidegger,authenticity functions as a prerequisite for morality. Sartre, however, sees moral systems,especially unjust and oppressive ones, as enemies of authenticity. While for Heideggerthe ‘fall’ is engendered by finality, for Sartre, as for Rousseau, it is brought about by sociability.

Initially, however, Sartre accepted Heidegger’s view of the primacy of authenticityover any specific moral system. In The War Diaries he claimed: ‘I can’t really see anything but a moral code based on authenticity.’ At this stage, Heidegger’s influence ‘has…struck me as providential, since it supervened to teach me authenticity and historicity just at the very moment when war was about to make these notionsindispensable to me’. With regard to authenticity, he wrote, he could not but strongly‘feel our inconsistency, as beings without a God, yet not authors of ourselves’.8 After his political conversion, though, he reversed this priority of authenticity over morality,arguing that only a just and non-oppressive society, whose members are no longer instruments for each other or mere means for the attainment of lofty goals, could fosterfree and authentic individuals who are ‘authors’ of their lives. Such a society would make it possible to overcome the universal tendency to bad faith: ‘One cannot be converted alone…ethics is not possible unless everyone is ethical’ (Notebooks, p. 9).

At the end of his life, in an interview with Michel Sicard in 1978, he spoke of a newontology of consciousness that would leave ‘nothing of Being and Nothingness and even of the Critique of Dialectical Reason standing’, but would lead to an ethic of ‘we’ in contrast to the individual ‘I’.9

In spite of his promise at the very end of Being and Nothingness to compose an ethical treatise, Sartre refrained from doing so because he realized that a purely intellectualappeal to solitary readers was useless. Indeed, this explains why the term ‘authenticity’ appears so infrequently in Being and Nothingness. One of the very few instances of it is Sartre’s statement about the ‘conversion to authenticity’ (BN, p. 246) as a ‘self-recovery of being’. This ‘radical conversion’

does not mean that we cannot radically escape bad faith. But this supposes a self-recovery of being which was previously corrupted. This self-recovery we shall call authenticity, the description of which has no place here…. These considerations do not exclude the possibility of an ethics of deliverance and salvation. But this can be achieved only after a radical conversion which we cannot discuss here.

(BN, pp. 70n.; 4l2)

Hence Being and Nothingness is ‘the idetic imagery of bad faith’10 before the

Sartre: from phenomenological ontology to psychoanalysis and politics 91

authenticating political ‘conversion’. Sartre’s last political works, especially the Critique of Dialectical Reason,11 portray a

state of social alienation. As he relates in conversation with Lévy, he was seeking ‘the deepest relation between men…which binds them together beyond the relations toproduction’ (Lévy, pp. 169–70). He mentions ‘a certain primary relationship, which is the relationship of brotherhood’ found in ‘a single family’; ‘a true brotherhood’, sharing ‘a common end or goal’ (ibid., pp. 170–1).

Authenticity rooted in the ontology of ‘human reality’ can be attained neither by intellectual means nor by social revolution, but the impulse to act in bad faith can besubdued in appropriate social frameworks. Sartre provides an anthropological analysis ofthe mechanisms that impel us to bad faith. His descriptions of the ‘hell’ that others are for us serve to counter the seductive charm of bad faith that abounds in society. Sartre emphasizes the negative as a foil to the positive patterns of justice and equality, which,though unable in themselves to guarantee authenticity, at least provide genuine moralityand dignity. The direct political action Sartre envisages is aimed at reforming society tosuch a degree that bad faith is no longer rewarded and hence loses its appeal.

Interestingly, the two thinkers who adopted an ontological approach to authenticity both went through a kind of midlife Umkehr or ‘conversion’: Heidegger, from the phenomenological ontology of Dasein to the poetry and mysticism of Being, and Sartre, from phenomenological ontology to politics. These changes manifest their dissatisfactionwith the meagre progress their respective ontologies had made in terms of implementingsocial authenticity.

In Sartre, as in Heidegger, we find a gap between ontology and anthropology. But in Sartre’s case the resonance between the ontological impossibility of authenticity and theanthropological version of ‘existential psychoanalysis’—according to which some analysed figures, such as Genet, indeed managed to attain authenticity on the Nietzscheanaesthetic model—is the force that incites us to take responsibility for the creation of ourselves: ‘the moral problem which has preoccupied me till now is basically [that] ofrelations between art and life’ (WD, p. 72).

I

As long as he remained under Heidegger’s influence, Sartre believed that phenomenological ontology could establish authenticity as a viable moral ideal. Hisphenomenology of the emotions, for example, aimed at purging consciousness of allcontent until it emerged as pure transparency and spontaneity. This creatively uninhibitedconsciousness becomes the author, or origin, of self. Sartre’s aim here is the same as that of Nietzsche’s purification of nature into a cosmic tabula rasa— to make way for the aesthetic model of authenticity by making possible spontaneous creativity, unrestrainedby any transcendental principle.

Sartre does not speak of authenticity in his early essay The Transcendence of the Ego.12 Retrospectively, however, he can be seen to have addressed the issue in reflecting


on how consciousness can generate spontaneous creativity. In effect, he is inquiring into the transcendental conditions for authenticity.

Using a revised phenomenological framework, Sartre argues for a non-egological intentional theory of consciousness. He maintains that anything considered to be part ofconsciousness or an immanent content of consciousness is really an object towards whichconsciousness directs itself. Images, emotions, motives, values and the ego itself areproduced by this consciousness, yet by virtue of its intentionality it is alwaystranscendent to the objects it has created. The self, for example, does not disclose itself toimmediate intuition in its entirety and thus, as an object transcending consciousness,belongs to the world. The world is constituted by intentional acts of pure consciousness;hence the self is the result of a synthetic act of organization rather than its agent. Sartreuses Husserl’s notion of konstituieren as the ordering of our images and representations of things, and the establishing of the meaning of the object as certain order, to help bridgethe gap between passive immanent content and spontaneous activity.

For Sartre, the self is an object constituted within the phenomenal field: ‘The ego is not the owner of consciousness; it is the object of consciousness’ (TE, p. 97). Consciousness is a kind of pure transparency, a mere openness to a world to which it adds nothing of itsown. This enables it to be a truly spontaneous and creative force unimpeded by suchinner obstacles as ‘psychic dispositions’ (ibid., p. 70), inhibiting emotions, or traits ofcharacter. Character is not a predetermined set of innate traits, but merely a set ofdispositions. ‘Potentiality’ is a fiction, otherwise ‘the I, with its personality, would be a sort of center of opacity’ (ibid., p. 41). The purification of consciousness maximizes creativity, enabling the individual to attain authenticity modelled on God’s own.

Sartre, like Heidegger, uses his phenomenology to attack the Cartesian Cogito ergo sum. There is no ‘I’ that thinks, but only thought and reflection upon this thought. WithSartre, the dissolution of the Cartesian egological self initiated by Nietzsche reaches itsclimax. Sartre’s phenomenological reading of consciousness leads him to believe thatthere is no entity that is an original, authentic self or ego, as Rousseau tended to believe.Authenticity lies in the created products of consciousness—it is the creative process itself.

Sartre favours a ‘realistic’ interpretation of Husserl’s concept of intentionality, which he considers ‘fruitful’ (ibid., p. 41) and utilizes to introduce authenticity into the world.On Sartre’s more pragmatic reading, phenomenology is redefined as a ‘science of fact’, not ‘essences’ (ibid., pp. 35, 113 n. 3). Sartre rejects the Husserlian technique of reduction along with Husserl’s notion of the transcendental ego. While Heideggerabandoned the concept of the transcendental ego in order to radicalize ontology, Sartregives it up to radicalize consciousness. Even so, however, his account of the ego here ismuch like Heidegger’s concept of ‘Being-in-the-world’. The ego is not discrete and isolated but ‘is outside, in the world. It is a being of the world, like the ego of another’ (ibid., p. 31; cf. p. 75, where Sartre explicitly cites Heidegger). Sartre’s application of the phenomenological method to the realm of facts and things, as opposedto essences, is motivated by the desire to avoid the solipsism (ibid., p. 103) implicit inHusserl’s doctrine of the transcendental ego: ‘Solipsism becomes unthinkable from the moment that the I no longer has a privileged status’ (ibid., p. 104).

Sartre, taking literally Husserl’s call to return ‘to the things themselves’, looks upon


phenomenology as a triumph over subjectivism. He interprets Heidegger’s ‘Being-in-the-world’ as movement: ‘To be is to fly out into the world…in order suddenly to burst out as consciousness-in-the-world.’13 Authenticity is rooted in this flight, this refusal to exist as substance, this life-long attempt to fight facticity. The purification of consciousness has broad moral implications: ‘No more is needed in the way of philosophical foundation for an ethics and politics which are absolutely positive’ (TE, p. 106). Thus, early in his career, Sartre attributed moral significance to his phenomenological explications ofconsciousness (ibid., p. 94). Purified consciousness, as creator of self, is like Spinoza’s notion of substance as the absolute cause of itself (causa sui), introduced in his Ethicsand referred to by Sartre (ibid., pp. 39, 82). Consciousness for Sartre is a continual self-creation ex nihilo at each successive instant in time. Hence, consciousness is endowed with a God-like status.

Consciousness is intentional activity directed at what is not itself. Hence authenticitydoes not imply the self-referential ‘ownness’ of the self, as it does for Heidegger, butrefers to a creative process which produces transcendent contents (including our ownselves) ‘outside, in the world, among others’ (Int.). Sartre places authenticity squarely in the human, all-too-human, intersubjective world: ‘It is not in some hiding-place that we will discover ourselves; it is on the road, in the town, in the midst of the crowd, a thingamong things, a man among men’ (ibid.).

Now if consciousness is defined by intentionality (TE, p. 38), and if authenticity is the outcome of intentional acts, then authenticity is defined by consciousness. Sartre isarguing that consciousness cannot be directly influenced by the external world, and that,given its unlimited spontaneity, it alone is responsible for its own escape from thisfreedom. Freedom is the relation of consciousness to the world and not that of the ego tothe world. The attributes Nietzsche uses to describe the authentic Übermensch, and Heidegger, the ontological Dasein, are bestowed by Sartre on this relationship betweenconsciousness and the world. Every intentional act is self-originating, self-determining and absolutely free. As Sartre’s thought develops, these features become the definingcharacteristics of authenticity.

Like Nietzsche, Sartre does not believe that introspection into one’s inner self can lead to knowledge of one’s authenticity or lack thereof (ibid., pp. 86–7). One cannot introspectively access one’s self if there is no self to introspect and no immanent content of consciousness. This has important implications for Sartre’s teachings on authenticity. The whole problem of recognizing one’s own, and the other’s, authenticity, must be shifted to the domain of concrete social and political action. This transition is furthermandated by Sartre’s thesis that we have no privileged access to our own ego over andabove ‘the ego of another’. My ego no longer belongs exclusively to myself. This helpsexplain why Sartre, unlike other thinkers, is comfortable assuming the role of omniscientjudge when speaking of his, and others’, authenticity. Again and again, in his War Diaries, biographies and autobiographies, we come across assessments of the authenticity or inauthenticity of individuals.14 For if one is completely transparent to others as well as to oneself, and if ‘man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself’, as Sartre asserts in his post-war lecture Existentialism and Humanism, then given that this self-making usually occurs in public, one can certainly judge others and be judged by themwith respect to authenticity or the lack thereof.


Sartre’s distinction between reflecting and reflected consciousness is relevant here. Reflecting consciousness is consciousness whose object is itself. Reflected consciousnessis consciousness as the object of reflecting consciousness. Sartre’s contention that ‘there is no I on the unreflected level’ (TE, p. 48) helps explain Heidegger’s account of the loss of self in the world of objects. The intentional act of directing one’s consciousness towards the world of objects is in itself an unreflective noetic act. Reflection upon itproduces a new object which did not exist before the act was grasped—the ego. Hence the reflected consciousness generates the ‘I’ which becomes the transcendent object of the reflective act but is not in itself a part of that act. Thus reflection not only disclosesobjects, but produces and constitutes them.

Authenticity is another product of our reflection. If I direct myself unreflectivelytowards the world of objects, if ‘I run after a streetcar’, if ‘I am absorbed in contemplating a portrait… I am plunged into the world of objects…. I have disappeared…. There is no place for me on this level’ (ibid., p. 49). Authenticity requires reflection as well as action. It should be noted, however, that Sartre emphasizes thediscrete and autonomous nature of each intentional act—the ‘ego’ or ‘me’ produced by reflection is only a fleeting moment. Authentic states are ‘instantaneous’, not permanent (ibid., p. 62). Like Nietzsche, Sartre seems to limit himself to the momentary pathos ofthe ‘now’. It is the present and not the future that determines authenticity, for in thepresent one has no potentiality but is completely exteriorized—one is only what one reflects upon now. Yet one is always more, since one never actually reflects upon all thatis present.

This also follows from Sartre’s contention that the ‘I’ which reflective intuition confronts is ‘an object grasped with neither apodictic nor adequate evidence…. It is not adequate, for the I is presented as an opaque reality whose content would have to be unfolded’ (ibid., p. 51). The ‘I’ appears veiled, indistinct and ‘deceptive from the start since we know that nothing but consciousness can be the source of consciousness’ (ibid., p. 52). When I use the word ‘I’, I may be in a state of what Sartre later calls ‘bad faith’. To regard the ‘I’ as a rigid entity with permanent features beyond the instantaneousmoment or pathos of ‘me’ is an act of bad faith: ‘I may deceive myself in thinking that Ihave such a me’ (ibid., p. 75). Bad faith is thus inherent in the epistemological features ofconsciousness. Sartre sees the genuine ego as ‘dubitable’ (ibid., p. 76), as comprised of ‘the infinite totality of states and of actions…never reducible to an action or to astate’ (ibid., p. 74).

If there is no way to talk about authenticity without a ‘me’, intentionality, by making possible the emergence of ‘me’, also makes possible my authenticity. However, this ‘me’, as the product of reflection, is dubitable and deceptive. To summarize, since all objects ofconsciousness, including the ‘me’, are outside consciousness, and since onlyconsciousness possesses absolute ‘certitude’ (ibid., p. 44), all states, and hence all authentic states, transcend consciousness, and are thus dubitable (ibid., p. 64). Sartre is introducing a rational and Cartesian element into the genesis of authenticity, an elementabsent from previous accounts. Sartre implies that the more intense the reflection onone’s consciousness, the clearer the sense of ‘me’, ‘I’ or ‘self’ that emerges. Hence the more reflective one is, the more authentic one becomes. But how can reflection produceauthenticity? Does not the reflective attitude give rise to a feeling of alienation from


one’s ‘reflected’ self that prevents one from spontaneously feeling one’s authenticity? Sartre alludes to this problem, saying that ‘reflection “poisons” desire’ (ibid., p. 59). Thus, in radical contrast to Kierkegaard, whose notion of authenticity involves intense,immediate passion, Sartre opts for a passionless authenticity. Yet Sartre later came toagree with Kierkegaard that reflection kills action, thereby destroying authenticity aswell. This led to his desperate existential move to concrete political action, undertaken toextricate himself from this epistemic trap, a trap in which some of his literary heroes,such as Mathieu in Roads to Freedom, were also deeply entangled.

It could, of course, be argued that reflection on our conscious processes, along with intentionality as directedness towards objects which are not part of consciousness, helpsmaintain a healthy distance from, and objectivity with respect to, our selves and ouractions. This in turn may foster awareness of our transcendent ego, and in particular, ourauthenticity or lack of it. In this sense, it could be claimed not only that one constitutesone’s self (ego), but that one is also free to check, control and judge it. This defence is unsatisfactory, however, since even at the phenomenological level of exposition, beforeontology is introduced, human authenticity emerges as a ‘useless passion’. As a ‘passion’, as an immediate pathos, it must be attained unreflectively, but this precludesthe emergence of an ego. The spontaneity of the unreflected consciousness cannot be co-opted into the authenticity of the reflected ‘I’; hence the precarious and dubious nature of authenticity. Indeed, given these epistemological considerations, Sartre absolves us, atone point, of any responsibility for these consequences of reflection, citing the very un-existential ‘essence’: ‘it is not my fault if my reflective life poisons “by its very essence” my spontaneous life’ (ibid., p. 59).

It could be argued that if consciousness is necessarily spontaneous and absolute, one is either fully responsible for one’s authenticity or not responsible at all. If my phenomenological make-up is such that I am not responsible for this self-generating self, how can I become a free and authentic being? If the reverse is true, I seem to be ‘condemned’ to be authentic in the same way as ‘I am condemned to be free’. But how, then, is it possible to act in bad faith? Sartre wrestles with these questions in theanthropological sections of Being and Nothingness. Indeed, even after writing that book,Sartre held the view that there was a serious problem here: ‘authenticity will unveil to us that we are condemned to create and that at the same time we have to be this creation towhich we are condemned’ (Notebooks, p. 515). For if bad faith is epistemologicallynecessary, how can political conversion overcome these pervasive features ofconsciousness? Thus tension between Sartre’s early ontological phenomenology and hislater anthropology can be traced to his earliest writings.

Be that as it may, if authenticity has an inherently public character, it becomes one’s duty to strive to attain it, and thus one hears what Heidegger refers to as ‘the call of conscience’. The categorical imperative is implicit in several of Sartre’s unpublished statements: ‘Authenticity is a duty that comes to us from outside and inside at once, because our “inside” is an “outside”’ (WD, pp. 53–4); one ‘can and must in authenticity assume the objective transformation of [one]self’ (Notebooks, p. 418).

Every consciousness is continually creating an ego that can, in principle, be known to everyone else. This exposure of the transcendent ego to public scrutiny and the constantawareness that one is being watched by the ‘other’ (le regard d’autrui, as Sartre calls it in


Being and Nothingness), impels us to escape this judgemental ‘hell’.15 We turn to disguises and acts of bad faith. While Sartre’s phenomenology establishes our authentic being in the world, it also accounts for the pervasive tendency to circumvent this mode ofbeing by escaping into inauthenticity.

Sartre argues that the transcendent ego is comparable to a melody. Just as separate notes constitute a melody, so an individual’s intentional acts, states and dispositions, over time, form a pattern which we perceive as personality or character. We compose ourselves and our characters much as a musician composes music: originally andauthentically, or imitatively and in bad faith.

Sartre’s Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions16 is an ‘experiment in phenomenological psychology’ (STE, p. 31) in the tradition of Husserl’s attempts to establish an alternative to the positivistic psychology then in vogue. Why did Sartre choose the study of theemotions to spear-head this attempt? His aesthetic approach to authenticity was a decisivefactor. By using the emotions as the first subject of his phenomenological explication,Sartre hoped not only to defend his thesis of the transparency of consciousness, but alsoto prove that there is nothing ‘accidental’ (ibid., p. 19) or passive in either consciousness or life. Even what are generally regarded as the most opaque, unconscious andinvoluntary aspects of our mental life are actively and intentionally created. We‘ourselves’, or, rather, ‘the human-reality’, as Sartre refers to Heidegger’s Dasein, deliberately anthropologizing it, are the sole authors of our lives and emotions, and thuswholly ‘responsible’ for them (ibid., pp. 23–4). I constitute myself freely as an emotionalhuman in choosing this particular ‘organized type of consciousness’ (ibid., p. 23). But I could have chosen differently, depending on my particular aim or ‘finality’ (ibid., p. 48). One is always free to shape and create one’s own pathos. The familiar excuse for inertia,passivity, impotence and unwillingness to take in hand our lives and selves—our emotions—is no longer available to us.

As sole author of my emotional states, I understand them perfectly, though I may notalways have the means to account for them verbally. In Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, as in Sartre’s earlier essay, self-awareness is a key element in what gradually becomes an explicit pattern of authenticity. Sartre introduces the concept of intentionalityinto the realm of emotion. Displaying almost Cartesian rationalism, he claims that ‘the human reality which is myself assumes its own being by understanding it’ (p. 24). Yet introspection is not the way to understanding, since ‘my comprehension of the human reality is dim and inauthentic’ (ibid.). To attain authenticity, to gain a genuineunderstanding of my self as self-created, this obscure and opaque reality ‘has to be made explicit and corrected’ through phenomenological analysis of the undeniably obscurerealm of the emotions.

Note that of all the thinkers on authenticity we have considered, Sartre comes closest tothe traditional equation between truth and authenticity, which essentially makes thewhole notion of authenticity redundant—a redundancy analogous, in Sartre’s opinion, to that of Husserlian transcendental self. What saves Sartre’s notion of authenticity from being swallowed up by the traditional model of objectively valid truth is his adaptation ofthe phenomenological exhortation to go ‘back to the things themselves’ (ibid., p. 31). By this Sartre refers not to cognitive encounters with pure phenomena as such, but, rather, todirect experiences with the real world and with the authentic creations of our


consciousness—our egos, emotions and imaginations,17 whether admirable or not. For it is the function of the emotions to paint our confrontation with the complexities

of the world in colours that make this confrontation bearable, or make it possible for us‘magically’ to escape it altogether. Preoccupation with feelings and inner pathos givesrise to inertia: one feels in place of doing. The emotional states thus function as escaperoutes, and we alone are responsible for their construction. Unlike Kierkegaard, whoblamed our reflective tendencies for rationalizing away action and suppressing authenticpassionate faith, Sartre contends that it is the emotions that are at fault. Constructed byour consciousness to escape active commitment and responsibility, states like ‘passive sadness’, ‘melancholy’, etc. (ibid., pp. 68ff.) are intentionally organized pathologicalbehaviours (note that this term comes from pathos): ‘Lacking both the ability and the will to carry out the projects I formerly entertained, I behave in such a manner that theuniverse requires nothing more from me’ (ibid., p. 69). Since ‘emotion is playacting’ (ibid., p. 65) it becomes clear that Sartre’s presentation of our emotional life here anticipates the notion of bad faith in Being and Nothingness.

Sartre’s reluctance to ‘give up the Cartesian cogito’ (ibid., p. 52), and his notion of authenticity as spontaneous creativity, play a crucial role in his attack on psychoanalysis(developed in BN: see, e.g., pp. 50–4). The postulation of unconscious emotional causesnot only compromises the ideal of immanent, self-sufficient and lucid consciousness by introducing alien and ‘passive…causal relational’ (STE, p. 52); it also undermines spontaneous self-creation, since we cannot control that which is not part of our consciousness. We cannot be responsible for that to which we cannot respond. Becauseof its anti-Cartesian premises, Sartre denies that psychoanalytic therapy, by helping usbecoming aware of our unconscious life, can lead to authenticity.

Nonetheless, though Sartre rejected the causal-deterministic Freudian approach to mental life, he was influenced by the psychoanalytic notion of wishful thinking and theFreudian thesis that even in the irrational and chaotic realm of the emotions, ‘functional’ order prevails (ibid., p. 74). He saw the emotions as intentionally seeking ‘transformation of the world’ when ‘all ways are barred and nevertheless we must act’ (ibid., p. 63). Emotions attempt to overcome the facticity and determination of the world ‘by magic’ (ibid.) when direct and realistic courses of action are unavailable owing to weakness of will or fear.

Despite Sartre’s insistence on the active and creative essence of the emotions, however, he cannot deny that, to the extent that they are a reaction to something in theworld, they are passive. Instead of changing the world or transforming ‘the object’ (for example, by political action), consciousness acts upon itself and transforms itself ‘in order to transform the object’ (ibid., p. 63). This passive component of emotion contributes, along with the active element, to the generation of bad faith. The emotions,as self-manipulative acts of consciousness, in which consciousness plays at being otherthan it is, become expressions of bad faith.

Using his phenomenology to reveal the magical and debased nature of the emotions,Sartre seeks to undermine our faith in this magic and clear the way for a lucid, Cartesianunderstanding of the situation, and a genuine struggle to cope with it: ‘Liberation can come only from a purifying reflection or from the total disappearance of the emotionalsituation’ (ibid., p. 81). The authentic frame of mind can only be attained by a lucid,


unemotional and completely sober appraisal of one’s situation and one’s place in it, since only this sober assessment can bring about a ‘conversion’ of one’s self within that situation. This effect can be enhanced by transforming the situation in such a way thatmagic is no longer needed to mask its unbearableness. If emotion is a ‘fall of consciousness into magic’ (ibid., p. 90) which makes the whole ‘social world’ into one which is ‘primarily magical’ (ibid., p. 85), the most realistic way to deliverance lies inexploding this magic and removing emotion from the sphere of authenticity.

Sartre’s characterization of consciousness as free spontaneity reflectively positing its own transcendent objects, as active rather than reactive, as neither caused by nor causingexternal objects and as transparent to itself, calls to mind the attributes of authenticity:spontaneity, lucidity, activity, reflectiveness, self-sufficiency and originality. Sartre feltthat this characterization of consciousness sufficed to secure the phenomenologicalviability of the aesthetic model of authenticity, though not, of course, its ontological andsocial viability.

Nevertheless, the phenomenological studies make it clear that we cannot create ourselves by looking inward into our seemingly given selves, by indulging in emotions or byimagining. Only by action, by changing the world, can the self be created. Sartre’s political turn is thus in no way incompatible with his early phenomenology and itsimplications for authenticity. Later, Sartre will claim that it is the indi-vidual choices we make that define us and constitute our identity. He draws a parallel between thephenomenological unity of consciousness, which creates the ego, and the ego’s acts, which create an authentic author of the ego.

But can we imagine a being that feels nothing? Sartre’s ideal sounds like a cold-blooded machine, calculating its way to freedom but avoiding feeling anything on theway. Is this picture accurate? Below, I try to answer this question by analysing twoheroes of Sartre’s early fiction: one who exemplifies the genuine seeker of authenticity, and one who escapes into the security of bad faith.

Sartre’s discussion of freedom, authenticity and bad faith began not with Being and Nothingness, but, rather, in two works of fiction I consider good introductions to the theoretical examination of these subjects in Being and Nothingness. Roquentin in Nauseadesperately seeks his freedom: ‘all I have ever wanted was to be free’.18 Lucien, the hero of ‘The Childhood of a Leader’, is just as determined not to exercise his freedom. The two are thus literary prototypes of the two basic attitudes to authenticity.

The writer Sartre emulates in his first philosophical novel, Nausea, is Kierkegaard. He borrows the device of the fictive diary used in Either/ Or and assumes the role of ‘editor’. Sartre tries to blur any distinction between art and life. Roquentin’s past is kept sketchy and indefinite. There are only short references to it, since the past, in keeping withSartre’s phenomenology of approximately the same period, does not determine thepresent or the future. Roquentin claims: ‘now my past is nothing but a huge hole’ (N, p. 95) and ‘I can no longer distinguish the present from the future’ (ibid., p. 50). Both literature and life are forms of created art. Indeed, the theme of melody, yet another formof art, recurs in the novel at significant moments of the hero’s inner life and becomes a metaphor for the authenticity Roquentin is trying to create from a shabby and fragmentedlife.

Sartre writes on two parallel levels to stress his rejection of the distinction between


literary fiction and life: in real life each of us creates himself much as the author createshis characters. Thus Roquentin identifies with the subject of his historical research, theMarquis de Rollebon, whose ‘documents’ and ‘diary’ (ibid., p. 25) he edits and analyses, just as Sartre ‘edits’ the diary of Roquentin. By researching Rollebon and seeking outpieces of ‘testimony’ which ‘don’t agree with one another’ (ibid.), Roquentin tries to mould him into a consistent individual with a substantial identity, just as Sartre shapesRoquentin and we all create our lives. It is no coincidence that, after writing on Nietzschein his youth, Sartre’s first literary hero is a biographer who attempts to prove that self-creation is possible. Roquentin, at the beginning of the novel, is in a state of‘limbo’ (ibid., p. 28); he is about to embark on an uncertain existential project, the creation of the self by the self alone.

Nausea is a phenomenological novel about the hero’s internal states, which are created through Roquentin’s reflection; there is almost no external action or plot. The diaryformat is thus highly appropriate. However, in addition to the novel’s phenomenological thrust, it also makes some subtle ontological distinctions, elaborated later.

Why is Roquentin ‘disgusted’ by ‘the flat pebble’ (ibid., p. 10), by ‘a lined page’ (ibid., p. 22), by ‘the dessert knife’ (ibid., p. 176) and, later, by ‘the chestnut tree’ (ibid., pp. 182–93)? Is it because, unlike himself, they are always what they are, or because he wishes to become like them, knowing that this is impossible—that he will never have such a well-defined essence, solid as a rock or a chestnut tree? The disgust and the feeling of nausea are not directed at the objects, at the opaque facticity proper, but, rather,at the ‘useless passion’, namely, at his own unattainable wish ‘to be sure’ (ibid., p. 10). Roquentin is fascinated by a ‘cold object’ (ibid., p. 13), which acts as a foil to his own self-transformation. After intense scrutiny of these objects, Roquentin claims ‘it’s I who have changed’ (ibid., p. 14). The changelessness of material objects highlights internalchanges and makes awareness of them possible. My intentional directedness towardsother objects shows me that, as pure consciousness, I am fluid and lack definition.

In addition to the ontological distinction between consciousness (être-pour-soi, Being-for-itself in later terminology) and material thing (être-en-soi, Being-in-itself), we also find the Heideggerian category of the ‘they’—the ‘people’ or the ‘crowd’ which envelop one’s ‘solitude’ (ibid., pp. 18–19). The search for the pathos of authenticity is thusinterrupted by occasional flights to the ‘regular world’ (ibid., p. 11), to a kind of Heideggerian ‘everydayness’.

Sartre’s first fictional hero is encountered in the midst of loneliness and reflection, but he is not devoid of feelings and emotions. He expresses a variety of intense emotionsthroughout the novel: ‘disgust’, ‘thrill’, ‘fear’, ‘melancholy’. All are self-created states, but this does not detract from their vivacity and intensity. The search for authenticity, farfrom being a mechanical adventure, is laden with emotional pathos, crises and feelings. Despite Sartre’s attempt to balance Heidegger’s emphasis on ‘moods’ with a sober Cartesian attitude, the emotions still play a significant role in the pathos of authenticity.Moreover, it should be noted that the search for authenticity is not a clear and explicitintention, but a kind of dreamlike, ‘misty’ state that cannot ‘fix anything’ (ibid., p. 17).

Nausea, however, does not belong to the category of feelings. Like Heidegger’s Angst, it is a necessary existential (i.e. ontological) structure of human beings that ‘seizes’ us ‘in its grip’ (ibid., p. 33). It is a symptom of the fact that we are free to pursue authentic self-


creation, that there is indeed no escape. Thus nausea is the predicament of anyoneimmersed in the search for authenticity. Sartre portrays the search as undertaken alone byan individual with no meaningful social relationships. Others cannot help; one must acton one’s own. Roquentin’s long-standing relationship with his girlfriend Army, who alsoaims at personal ‘transformation’ (ibid., p. 205) independently of Roquentin and more orless in complete isolation, illustrates this point. Only in this way is attaining authenticity atruly spontaneous achievement. The other people around Roquentin make him ‘a little sick’, and he feels them ‘so far away’ from him (ibid., p. 155). This solipsistic search follows logically from Sartre’s phenomenology, which discloses that consciousness is self-sufficient and self-generated, and cannot be influenced by others. Unlike Heidegger’s authentic Dasein, who appropriates his history and heritage, Sartre’s hero cannot avail himself of his past and history: ‘all the past history of the world is of no use’ (ibid., p. 103). He is completely alone in his search.

Sartre describes Roquentin’s attack of nausea when facing the chestnut tree as a kind of ‘revelation’ (ibid., p. 182). This nauseating experience reveals the meaning of one’s ‘existence’, namely, its ‘absolute contingency’ (ibid., p. 188). Sartre explicitly employs Heidegger’s term Dasein when he states that ‘to exist is simply to be there’ (ibid., p. 188). Nausea is the piercing awareness of one’s contingency that engenders the need tojustify one’s existence: to make it seem necessary. However, lucidity dictates that we accept this contingency and ‘play with the absurdity of the world’ (ibid., p. 186). Sartre, like Nietzsche and Camus, seems to hint that it is this contingency that makesauthenticity possible in a completely immanent world. Immanence and contingency aresynonymous. We come to terms with our estrangement from the world of objects whichare also contingent by creating other contingent things. As creators we feel ourselvesnecessary rather than contingent.

One of the contingent aspects of our existence is the manner and date of our death. Inthis novel, death is presented as something basic. Echoing the Heideggerian approach,Sartre claims that death enters our lives to define them. In Sartre’s words, ‘an adventure…achieves significance only through [one’s] death. Towards this death, which may also be my own, I am drawn irrevocably’ (ibid., p. 59). Nausea, however, does not fully replicate Heidegger’s ‘Being-towards-death’; indeed, Sartre plays down the role ofdeath in achieving authenticity, and it is not really a central motif in his writings. InSartre’s preface to Sarraute’s Portrait of a Man Unknown, however, he claims that authenticity ‘is the real connection with others, with oneself and with death’.19

It is interesting that, aside from his occasional attacks of nausea, there are no significant events in Roquentin’s life. His constant struggle with bad faith does not require extreme or extraordinary circumstances. In contrast to the heroic models ofauthenticity in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, he is a new type of hero: the anti-hero whose life is devoid of any extraordinary events, whom we would pass on the street withoutnoticing. Behind this mundane anti-hero is Sartre’s ontology, which emphasizes that all human beings are in the same ontological predicaments: we all are contingent beingsencountering other things and trying to define our selves. The ontologization of the clashbetween the lonely individual and the ‘crowd’, which began with Heidegger, reaches a climax in the early Sartre. Roquentin was ‘free… in the midst of this tragic crowd taking its rest’ (ibid., pp. 78–80). The search for authenticity in these circumstances dooms


Roquentin and other twentieth-century heroes to feel themselves estranged from the ‘they’: ‘it was their Sunday and not mine’ (ibid., p. 81). This is, in the early Sartre, thebasic condition for the search for one’s authenticity, which takes place not necessarily inthe ‘heart of darkness’, but in the heart of everydayness, in the crush of the contemporarythrong, in the glut of material objects. The elitist tone of the nineteenth-century thinkers on authenticity is drowned out by the noise of everydayness.

Rather simplistically, however, Sartre identifies the bad faith of the ‘they’ with the bourgeois ethic of ‘self-important people’ (ibid., p. 101) who regard their selves asserious and solid ‘objects’ (en-soi) and who die as copies. Roquentin clashes with this‘bourgeois élite’ (ibid., p. 128) and with their ethos, which emphasizes such values asGod, the family, wealth, authority, respect, rights and duties, tradition, etc. (ibid., pp.128ff.). This clash necessitates that Roquentin remain lonely as a shelter against whatHeidegger called ‘the domination of the they’. The lonely seeker after authenticity canoften feel ‘weak’ (ibid., p. 150). This sensation of weakness also stems from the vulnerability of the individual who, devoid of a firm and definitive self, is trying to createone.

It is difficult to evaluate the results of the process of self-creation. In reference to his biography of the Marquis de Rollebon, Roquentin asks himself a basic question aboutthis: ‘How on earth can I…save the past of somebody else?’ (ibid., p. 139). This question can be paraphrased as ‘How can one judge the authenticity of someone else’s life?’ Here, before the conception of Sartre’s existential psychoanalysis, the problem remains open.Roquentin gives up his project of evaluating the authenticity or lack thereof in the lives ofothers and ‘stop[s] writing…about Rollebon’ (ibid., p. 138).

Instead of creating Rollebon as a work of art, Roquentin becomes immersed in creating his own self along the lines of the musical-aesthetic model, which creates a ‘melody’ out of ‘a host of little jolts’ (ibid., p. 37; cf. p. 59). This process of self-creation allows one to overcome nausea or Heideggerian Angst and to cope with the contingency, nothingness and meaninglessness of our existence. Authentic creation can add ‘a little order’ to one’s lonely life and give it meaning. Hence Roquentin’s exclamation: ‘What summits would I not reach if my own life were the subject of the melody?’ (ibid., p. 60). Whether or not this goal is attainable is unimportant, since the very act of pursuing it fosters the will toaffirm and accept one’s life. It is significant that at this decisive moment Roquentinexpresses the Nietzschean idea of authentic amor fati, a notion Nietzsche ties to the concept of the ‘eternal recurrence of the same’. Roquentin cries: ‘To live it all over again, in the same circumstances, from beginning to end’ (N, p. 60). At the end of this novel, Roquentin feels he ‘might succeed…in accepting [him]self’ authentically (ibid., p. 253).

At this stage, Sartre’s conclusion is that one is ‘saved’ (ibid., p. 251) by music, more generally, by art. In creating one’s self, one may become both a genuine artist and a workof art. By becoming and living like ‘a saxophone note’ (ibid., p. 248), like a ‘melody’ (ibid., p. 249), one can achieve ‘justification of one’s existence’. The metaphor of music and the aesthetic model of authenticity transform this gloomy and nauseating novel into an optimistic literary manifesto of the viability of the search for authenticitywithin the anonymous crowd.

It is also true, however, that another type of hero can emerge, one who shuns aesthetic authenticity, preferring the easy convenience of a life of bad faith.


In Nausea, the hero’s search for authenticity is undertaken and narrated in earnest. By contrast, Lucien’s escape from such a search into adventures conducted in bad faith isnarrated in an increasingly ironic tone, reaching its parodic climax in the last sentence,where ‘he decided’ to ‘grow a moustache’.20 The irony that Sartre employs to describe Lucien’s flights from freedom to bad faith is highlighted by the very name of the story, ‘The Childhood of a Leader’ (or, in the original, L’Enfance d’un chef). The word chef in French connotes not just a leader or boss, but one who belongs to the social elite, whoowns considerable property and is a patron of his or her country’s heritage and culture. However, when we follow the hero’s spiritual adventures and his recurrent endeavours tosynthesize personal identity from people and literary figures he encounters, we begin tosee that Lucien is a weak and frightened person, a true anti-hero who runs away from the freedom to create an identity for himself and by himself. Indeed, he prefers to concoct anidentity from ready-made formulas, from the hackneyed traditions and demands of hisancestors, his homeland, his religion and his past. And thus, in contrast to the sympathyone feels towards Roquentin in Nausea, one now feels utter contempt towards the figureof the ‘leader’ of the French nation, the embodiment of the ethos of its social elite.

Why is Lucien so repulsive? It is because, as this anti-hero goes through the various stages of the ‘search’ for authenticity, he manifests virtually every one of the modes ofbad faith classified by Sartre in Being and Nothingness. In ‘The Childhood of a Leader’, Sartre emphasizes reflection and introspection rather than action and plot, in line with hisphenomenological thesis that we create our selves through reflective, intentional acts ofconsciousness. Lucien is preoccupied with such acts throughout the story; though heseems intent on finding his personal identity and his ‘genuine’ self, he is actually using this absorption to escape genuine creation of his authentic self.

At one point in Lucien’s search he experiences a brief homosexual adventure. Despite the tempting permanent identity that homosexuality offers, Lucien rejects it because hefeels that this identity will not be welcomed by respectable society or fit in with the role and image of the factory-owner. And thus we sense, as we follow further Lucien’s ruminations about and adventures with surrealism, psychoanalysis, etc., that Lucien hasalready decided what he is and what he wants to become, that from the beginning of hissearch he has accepted the role his family and heritage have imposed on him: to be a chef, a pillar of his community. Lucien knows all along that owning a factory is his predestinedfate, his life’s ‘natural’ destination, and that he was born into the role of chef and all it demands of him. Hence, though it looks as if Lucien rejects all kinds of scenarios for hislife because of dissatisfaction with them, he actually rejects them a priori since he hasalready decided to become what others have destined him to be: a leader of his nation.Lucien plays the part of one choosing his life, but he really chooses nothing and becomeswhat he already is. In deluding himself into believing that he is freely creating andchoosing, Lucien is playing a sophisticated game rather than actually proceeding towardsauthenticity.

Only when he arrives at the last stage of his search for identity—his adventures with the fascist youth—and begins to hate foreigners and everything not French, does the game end. The mix of anti-Semitism and nationalism fits in well with his predestinedmission—to become a chef who demands the veneration of those who surround him, especially the non-French populace. This last exploit becomes Lucien’s permanent


identity since it does not require the painful reflection on his life that was an integral partof his previous adventures. Psychoanalysis and surrealism force Lucien to think ratherthan to do. Only ‘healthy’ and steady nationalism emphasizes and encourages deeds. The exteriorization of Lucien from consciousness to ‘moustache’ reaches its peak during his activities as an anti-Semitic thug and a fighter for the sacred values of traditional France.

Notwithstanding the fact that views found in Sartre’s later essay on Anti-Semite and Jew, where he presents the anti-Semite as embodying bad faith, are also present in this early story, here Sartre does not directly fault Lucien for becoming an anti-Semite and does not explicitly criticize the ethic of the ‘master’ (CL, p. 218) who is actually a slave. Sartre’s tactic is ironic throughout, as even the use of the word chef in the French title of this story attests. This word alludes to rightwing politics, and its very use is a marker ofironic distance. Sartre’s readers reject Lucien’s character not because of any specific content, but because of the manner in which he acquires it. Specific attributes are in any event not the focus of Sartre’s irony; rather, it is Lucien’s fundamental bad faith in creating this persona that Sartre despises. Lucien’s final identity is rooted not in his free choice, but in the land of France, its tradition, its ‘owners’ and its rulers. Values which are simply the products of arbitrary circumstances are not values at all, according toSartre, who views morality and authenticity from an aesthetic perspective: morality is notwhat is found, but something created spontaneously.

The end of the story does not leave any doubt as to Lucien’s bad faith. He is determined to end his journey of self-creation, to stop reflecting on his life and its meaning and to start doing: to possess ‘a virgin’ (ibid., p. 219), to become the legitimateowner of his father’s factory and a pillar of his community—its chef. Lucien’s resolution is particularly conspicuous against the background of Roquentin’s continuing hesitation at the end of Nausea, where the outcome is left open. Here Lucien’s final decision leaves no room for authenticity. In opposition to Roquentin, who tries hesitantly to become whathe is, Lucien decisively becomes what he is not and never can be: solely the product ofhis education, heritage, tradition and nation (CL, pp. 217–19).

It should be noted, however, that in this parody of a Bildungsroman Sartre does not distinguish between two types of what he later calls facticité (facticity). The first is physical or biological facticity, examples of which would be the characteristic of being‘tall’ (e.g. Lucien’s height, which earns him the nickname ‘beanpole’) and characteristics that have to do with one’s ‘situation’ in the world, such as class, family or tradition. Inreference to the second type of facticity, the freedom of others is a relevant factor. Forexample, one must accept the rights of one’s forefathers to have their own traditional values and to wish to share them with their sons. This is thus a kind of cultural/historicalfacticity. Only in the first volume of the Critique of Dialectical Reason does Sartre begin to address this issue, by trying to examine how and under what conditions our creationsbecome forces beyond our control, shaping the praxis which created them.

Both stories attest Sartre’s belief that authenticity is ‘useless passion’: when one seeks it sincerely, as did Roquentin, it is elusive; when one escapes it, it disappears. To accountfor this disappointing state of affairs, Sartre articulates an ontological account of humanreality.


II

Sartre does not supply his readers with a precise definition of authenticity, but is contentto remark generally that it ‘consists in having a true and lucid consciousness of thesituation, in assuming the responsibilities and risks that it involves, in accepting it inpride or humiliation, sometimes in horror and hate’.21 But what exactly is the ‘situation‘ in question? One possible answer is that authenticity, as creation of the self, is actually anongoing project. Sartre’s conclusion is grounded in this ontology: ‘Man is not what he is’ implies that man cannot be authentic, however he tries to become authentic.

On Sartre’s reading, to wish to be authentic is to wish to become God. God has nosecret self. He is totally self-identical and self-caused. Sartre accepts Spinoza’s formulation: God is the only causa sui—the only entity that is the necessary foundation of its being. In the original Greek sense of authenticity as ‘having auctoritas’, as possessing inherent authority over one’s self, and as being the sole source of one’s own being, only God is wholly and absolutely authentic. God is always just ‘what he is’. On this divine model of authenticity, to become authentic in the world of people and objects is to beGod—to be a being in whom objectivity (authenticity as a social value) and subjectivity(authenticity of the individual) coincide. Unfortunately, we are not God; thus for us toaspire to be authentic is a form of bad faith. The quest for authenticity presupposessalvation where none is available, and one who goes ahead with this project is thusdisregarding what he knows full well to be the case. Thus Sartre accuses Heidegger of‘bad faith’ in speaking of the ‘moral’ drive or ‘ethics’ of authenticity (BN, pp. 80, 531).

By contrast to his ambivalence towards Heidegger, Sartre’s attitude to Nietzsche is unmistakably positive.22 He agrees with Nietzsche that ‘we have killed God’, but qualifies Nietzsche’s claim that to overcome this loss we ourselves must ‘become gods’ (GS, sec. 125). We must be God, Sartre agrees, but, owing to our ontologicallimitations, we cannot. We must try, within our limited ‘situation’, ‘human reality’ or ‘facticity’ to overcome our tendency to be what we cannot and instead be what we are,not as God but like God. We must maximally create our own selves within the factuallimitations of our heredity, history and traditions. Sartre is telling us we have no choicebut lucidly to face our real situation rather than fantasize about ‘useless’ alternatives. Like Nietzsche, Sartre anthropologized the concept of God and chose athe-ism in his quest for authenticity. Significantly, the very first pages of Being and Nothingnessintroduce the concept of the immanence of the world as it appears to us. Sartre claimsthat appearances do not point to a ‘hidden reality’ (BN, p. xlv). The first philosophical teaching he refers to in Being and Nothingness is Nietzsche’s ‘illusion of worldsbehind-the-scenes’ (ibid., p. xlvi).

Sartre claims that the analysis of the structure of consciousness yields two ontologically primitive types of being: being-for-itself, or conscious being; and being-in-itself, which, having no consciousness of its own, is an object for consciousness. One ofSartre’s main ontological contentions is that nothing can be, or have, both sorts of being


at once: nothing can be ‘being-for-and-in-itself’. This is the impossible sort of being to which our consciousness unremittingly aspires. We are condemned to be free becausefrom the moment we exist we are, and cannot escape being, makers of choices. This infact follows even from Sartre’s earlier phenomenology, according to whichconsciousness is characterized by spontaneity. The claim that ‘existence precedes essence’23 is the claim that one is what one does—how one attempts to fulfil one’s goals and projects—and what one is going to do. Since one’s consciousness is completely independent, its essence cannot be given beforehand as a substantial form waiting torealize its nature.

This helps elucidate Sartre’s infuriating formulation: ‘human reality is a being which is what it is not and is not what it is’ (BN, p. 58). ‘I am what I am not’ in the sense that I cannot be a human being with the positive ontological completeness that a tree is a tree. Since there is no self to speak of, and no one is what she is, it follows that we cannotspeak of authenticity in the Nietzschean manner of ‘becoming what one is’, or romantically, as did Rousseau, in terms of an inner essence to which one must remaintrue. According to Sartre, one can never attain self-identity, only the identity of selfless becoming—never being. Note, however, that Sartre asserts that ‘human reality is a being’. This self-contradiction is an inevitable consequence of Sartre’s ontology. It indicates the impossibility of imposing a rationalistic logic of identity on his notions. Inthis, Sartre resembles Kierkegaard. In any event, authenticity is not an essence ofconsciousness or of human reality; one strives to attain authenticity not as essence, but asfreedom. Authenticity cannot be predicated of either the individual consciousness orhumanity as a whole. To attribute authenticity to someone is to acknowledge the‘nothingness’ (the consciousness) in that person’s being and the fact that she does not tryto disguise it in bad faith.

Unlike sincerity, ‘the grasping of the authentic self is not based on being, it is a willingdirected to a willing: it is a project that loses itself in order to save itself’ (Notebooks, pp. 479–80). It is a willing not to will to be authentic in the sense that God is authentic. In contrast to Kant, whose morality emphasizes intentions, Sartre stresses actions thatoriginate spontaneously and ‘gratuitously’ (ibid., p. 481). ‘In authenticity… I reduce the internalized objective quality to a sequence of behaviour’ (ibid., p. 475). Consequently, one can attain authenticity only when acting, and not through reflection. More exactly,using the language of Sartre’s earlier phenomenology, we can say that actions are not actions of the self; rather, the self is a product of a series of actions. Hence it is morecorrect to speak of ‘actions generating me’, some of them generating me authentically,than to speak of ‘my actions’. One’s authenticity is, then, the sum-total of authentic self-generating actions. Moreover, Sartre claims that there is rarely a single significant actwhich is not part of some ‘original projection of myself which stands as my choice ofmyself in the world’ (BN, p. 39). Authenticity is not one notable action, as it is not theself or a predicate; rather, it is from this fundamental project of self-choice that all other predicates of authenticity and authentic actions derive their meaning.

Criticism of Kant’s categorical imperative is implicit here. Kant urged us to be moralfor the sake of morality perse. Sartre, on the other hand, claims that to behave authentically for the sake of authenticity or of being hailed as an authentic person is notto behave authentically at all: ‘if you seek authenticity for authenticity’s sake, you are no


longer authentic’ (Notebooks, p. 4). Thus to will authenticity for its own sake is to will to be defined as being-for-itself-in-itself, as a conscious thingin-the-world, which is not possible. As a predicate of human reality, authenticity is unattainable, becauseauthenticity is nothing. The project of becoming as God is enmeshed in bad faith. Butwhat about the more modest project of becoming like God by adopting the aesthetic model of authenticity? Sartre’s ontology seems compatible with spontaneous activitywhich generates authenticity. Indeed, this is the conclusion Sartre reaches in hisNotebooks: ‘authenticity will unveil to us that we are condemned to create and that at thesame time we have to be this creation to which we are condemned’ (p. 515). Yet what sense of authenticity can Sartre grant to the aesthetic model of ‘creating the self’ if one can never be a complete self or wholly at one with the created self, as prescribed byHeidegger?

Being and Nothingness introduces another conception of authen-ticity, one which focuses on the seeker’s attitude to this ideal. The authentic stance is in fact the soberrealization that one’s search for authenticity cannot be realized because one never owns one’s ‘transcendent’ self. I am not what I am, and I pursue this realization by overcoming the seductive invitations to bad faith I encounter everywhere, with their offers of a self Ican never have. Thus I must relate to my self as something which cannot be God. Onecannot be authentic, but one can act authentically by trying not to make the search forauthenticity into one’s ‘fundamental project’ in life.

This conclusion also follows from Sartre’s conception of the free être-pour-soi. Were our consciousness not free of any external determination, were it unable to create itsvalues, it would simply be an object. But consciousness cannot be a ‘being-in-itself’, since it cannot escape its freedom: we are free even when we try to renounce ourfreedom. However we act, we are always responsible for ourselves and for what becomesof us. The awareness of this ‘dreadful freedom’ is anguish. Referring repeatedly to Kierkegaard and Heidegger, Sartre claims that ‘it is in anguish that man gets theconsciousness of his freedom’ (BN, p. 29).

Sartre assumes that it is difficult to live with freedom and responsibility, and that people commonly try to cast off the burden—to live as though they were inanimateobjects, to make excuses for their conduct in a world they themselves created and areresponsible for. They live in perpetual anguish, for they can neither bear their freedomnor renounce it; they can neither bear being conscious nor exist as things. To exist in thisperpetual quandary is to affirm anguish and to live authentically.

Since Sartre cannot describe authenticity in a positive way, he provides lengthy descriptions of patterns of bad faith to discourage us from adopting them in our dailylives. Significantly, at the beginning of his discussion of bad faith, Sartre refers to ‘irony’ as something that ‘annihilates’ what has been posited ‘within one and the same act…. [It] affirms to deny and denies to affirm’ (ibid., p. 47). Sartre’s discussion of bad faith, however, far from adopting a subtle ironic tone, is actually a clear example of how hiswhole ontology is deliberately imbued with moral evaluation. From the start, hisexplication of the phenomenon of bad faith voices strong disapproval of these ‘negative attitudes’ (ibid., p. 47).

Because human reality is freedom, the possibility of bad faith is an inherent feature ofbeing human. The obsessive pursuit of substance by the ‘for-itself’ inauthenticates the


human consciousness, since originally and genuinely consciousness is pure intentionality,that is, pure nothingness. Here, however, we find one of Sartre’s notorious contradictions: if consciousness is not a substance and thus cannot have essential properties, how can the‘passion’ for being en-soi be inherent in it? How can consciousness tend to bad faith if itis entirely dispositionless? If the desire to be God is a universal phenomenon, as Sartreargues, making it a central feature of his ontology, must it not be rooted inconsciousness?

Sartre claims that bad faith is the refusal to recognize the self as both facticity and transcendence. Three basic negative attitudes toward the self are possible:

We can now comprehend Sartre’s attack on the ideal of sincerity (BN, pp. 58–9, 64–7; cf. Notebooks, pp. 474–5), which puts him squarely within the tradition of the otherphilosophers of authenticity. Sartre repudiates this ideal, namely, the view that one is andought to be for oneself only what one is for others. He regards this as a sophisticated formof bad faith, one which is based on the objective attitude and derived from the rationalist ideal of correspondence. It reduces human reality solely to the ontology of ‘in-itself’, and has meaning only in a world of objectified subjects—a world where patterns of bad faith dominate human relationships: ‘in order for bad faith to be possible, sincerity itself must be in bad faith’ (BN, p. 67). One can even claim that according to Sartre all rationalistphilosophies embracing objective ‘norms and criteria of truth’ manifest a ‘Weltanschauung of bad faith’ (ibid., p. 68). Moreover, if ‘inauthenticity’ is, to use Sartre’s later formulation, ‘to comprehend oneself in terms of the world’ or ‘nature’ (Notebooks, pp. 468, 6), then the biological model of authenticity is itself in bad faith. If the aesthetic model of authenticity is also thwarted by social facticity andintersubjective ‘hell’—the socially rooted structures of bad faith—then what remains is to confront the primary obstacle to authenticity in the political realm. Yet the illusion thatpolitics will bring about authenticity must be abandoned, since society will simply turnthe authentic individual into a fact of the social world, a being en-soi.

Nevertheless, love (in which consciousness interacts as a freedom with another

1 The individual may regard himself as pure transcendence, as forever beyond his ‘situation’, as neither part of nor responsible for choices he has made, since he is, as it were, beyond choosing (for example, Lucien). Such an individual sees himself not as possessing a situated freedom, but as having a ghostly, dislocated freedom that glides through the world untouched and untouching. This posture is one of extreme alienation, like that which characterizes Kierkegaard’s ‘aesthetic sphere’.

2 One may choose to deny one’s transcendence completely, viewing oneself as a thing and one’s values as determinate consequences of this objective existence. Sartre describes this as the ‘spirit of seriousness’ (l’esprit de sérieux) in which one regards all values and the very meaning of the world as constituted prior to and independently of one’s own existence.

3 A third sort of bad faith consists in treating oneself as an other instead of treating oneself as one’s self. This pattern of bad faith is distinct from, though parallel to, the second pattern. To treat oneself as an other is to deny transcendence and turn one’s self not into a thing, but into pure facticity. This pattern occurs through beingwith-others and is the most fundamental of the three.


freedom), artistic creation, play and philosophic reflection are examples of acts whichseek not the impossible synthesis of the in-itself-for-itself, but the intentional relations between consciousness and the world (i.e. between for-itself and in-itself).

Only things-in-themselves are wholly subject to the law of identity. For humans,identity is always something yet to be achieved. To try and escape the endless search foridentity by embracing ready-made ‘identities’ is to adopt a persona, literally a mask and a role, with set speeches and patterns of behaviour. The genuinely free ‘master’, on the other hand, will experience continual striving and will always be in the process ofbecoming, never of being. She is dynamic, fluid and ever creative, never ceasing tosearch for greater self-knowledge and selftransparency. She will always strive to become what she chooses to become, regardless of what others expect, demand or invite her to be.The ‘slave’ (BN, p. 47), Sartre says, referring deliberately not only to Hegelian metaphorbut also to Nietzsche’s distinction between moralities of masters and slaves, tries ceaselessly and in bad faith to become something fixed and affirmative. Yet this isimpossible: one is encompassed by one’s existence, and ‘there is no exit’.

Sartre intends his ontological explication of human Being as creative but limited consciousness to restrain our desire to persist in the impossible ‘project’ of becoming authentic by becoming God. Atten-tive reading of Being and Nothingness, he hopes, will inspire the reader to let go of the impossible dream of becoming an ideally authenticbeing and embrace the more realistic goal of living authentically in a humanly possiblemanner. This alternative settles for keeping one’s freedom intact and using it within thelimits of one’s situation without escaping to bad faith.

Sartre adopts Nietzsche’s idea that one becomes what one is by overcoming the wish to be that which one is not. Like Nietzsche, Sartre wants to provide us with salvation fromour need for salvation. However, here Sartre includes also salvation from the Nietzscheanideal of authentic life.

Sartre thus works himself into a corner with respect to the social viability of authenticity. Ironically, his philosophy of engagement and personal commitment seemsimpossible to implement. Yet this irony discloses the limits of ontology in reference toauthenticity and points to a solution—political activism. Thus in spite of Sartre’s claim that it is ‘not possible to derive imperatives from ontology’s indicatives’ (ibid., p. 625) and the fact that he never published his long-awaited ethical treatise, it would be moreaccurate to conclude that Being and Nothingness itself contains the long-awaited ethical imperatives. In Being and Nothingness two ethical conclusions with respect to authenticity are reached. The first is that we must accept the ontological fact that humanBeing is an ambiguous fusion of immanence (‘in-itself’) and transcendence (‘for-itself’), and that bad faith is the flight from this ambiguity. Consequently, one’s authenticity consists in ‘lucid’ recognition of the impossibility of becoming a Godlike authenticcreature. The second ethical implication is that our efforts must shift from theory toconcrete political action. If social authenticity is not viable, let us at least proceed topolitical reform.

The ‘useless passion’ cannot be expunged, but it can be frozen out by ontological explication, which reveals its futility, and by literature, which depicts this graphically. Anexample is Sartre’s play In Camera. Sartre’s attempts to influence readers thus point in adirection entirely different from that of earlier promoters of authenticity. He encourages


readers to give up their futile desire for unconditional authenticity and instead committhemselves to the more practical aim of bringing about political and social change thatwill ultimately lead to freedom, equality and justice. Sartre warmly endorses edifyingliterature; indeed, he demands that writers engage in socio-political dialogue and confront moral issues. He calls for committed writers to persuade their readers and ‘move’ them ‘to action’.24

In Being and Nothingness the notion of authenticity is left dangling: like other values, it is neither justified nor ‘unjustified’ (BN, p. 38), though Sartre claims it is a ‘useless passion’. Nevertheless, Sartre did not despair of trying to make authenticity a viable moral-social value. In a 1946 lecture, L’Existentialisme est un humanisme, Sartre tried to attract listeners and readers by speaking, as it were, their language, as Kierkegaard did inhis aesthetic writings.25

Sartre used the lecture to consider two basic problems that had haunted his ontology. (1) If freedom is solely a form, and if authenticity as a value is absolutely unjustified—why not embrace, say, fascism? To justify freedom for all and to defend himself againstthis critique, Sartre turns to Kant. (2) How is it possible to make the transition from thegeneral theoretical realm of ontology to the ontic sphere of everyday existence andconcrete action?

If Sartre could objectively ground value-judgements and provide for their concrete application, he would be able to give positive content to authentic existence. Moreover,justification of the moral superiority of authenticity to bad faith, and explication of therelation between authenticity and social morality, would enable him to move on topolitical philosophy and socio-political freedom, without having to recant his ontology. The lecture attempts to steer the search for authenticity onto a more viable path than thatof ontology proper. While Sartre never did write his treatise on ethics, this lecture on theobjectivity of freedom covers the same ground.

Sartre failed in this endeavour. Recognizing his failure, he came to regret publication of the essay and plunged into intense political activity. Nevertheless, while proclaiminghimself a Marxist at this stage, Sartre did not repudiate his earlier ontology and itstheoretical prognosis as to the viability of the ideal of authenticity. Nor did he repudiatehis earlier aesthetic model of the free creation of the self despite the obvious difficultiesthat would face anyone who tried to adopt it. However, Sartre acknowledged that ‘the possibilities of any individual were strictly limited by his situation’ (FC, pp. 209–10). To come to grips with the limited freedom of actual life, particularly as regards socialconstraints, that social situation itself must be changed.

In his later writings Sartre sets aside ontology in order to concentrate on his aesthetic model. He argues for two main developments: (1) maximization of individual freedom through ‘radical’ change in the nature of society, which is possible given that the social order is contingent and hence changeable; and (2) inspiring the individual’s will to self-creation by providing role models in his existential-psychoanalytic biographies. These biographies demonstrate that authenticity is viable even in the most taxing circumstances.Sartre’s book on Jean Genet analyses a potential hero of authenticity in relation to hissocial context. At the end he concludes: ‘Genet holds the mirror up to us: we must look atit and see ourselves.’26


III

The ontological impasse over authenticity prompted Sartre to explore the method ofexistential psychoanalysis.27 It was devised to assist us in rethinking our life-patterns, which have become moulded in the ‘spirit of seriousness’ that views us as objects subordinated to the world. For Sartre, ‘conversion’ is fostering a new version of our selves and our surroundings within the given ontological framework. Sartre’s existential psychoanalysis attempts to induce readers to change, transform or accept their originalchoices. We can change these projects only when we know what they are and how wecame to create them. Sartre tries to provide us with the means for examining our lives sothat we can decide whether to go on with them or ‘radically’ change them.

As de Beauvoir attests, Sartre wrote his biography of Flaubert ‘to prove that any man is perfectly knowable so long as one uses the right method and possesses the necessarydocuments’.28 Sartre’s ‘existential psychoanalysis’ is based on the intentional structure of consciousness he explicated earlier. However, he now introduces the notion of the‘person’, and develops the idea of ‘situated freedom’ by bringing concrete examples—examples of free creations of consciousness itself within the facticity of a given‘situation’ and its concomitant social relationships.

In his biography of Flaubert, Sartre examines his anthropological thesis about authenticity as self-creation in agonizing detail. He tests his thesis under the most severe conditions, picking the most unfavourable circumstances for the initial factical‘situation’. Sartre deals with Flaubert’s life in order ‘to understand this scandalous occurrence: an idiot who becomes a genius’.29 In another study he examines a thief, ‘ragamuffin’ and ‘bastard’ who, nonetheless, ‘not for a moment has wanted to believe that there was no way out of the situation’ and became a brilliant playwright ‘by forging his destiny’ (Genet, pp. 15, 16). Unlike Lucien, Genet had no ‘natural right’ to anything and was deprived of everything; nevertheless, by dint of suffering and turmoil, hemanaged to emerge ‘a triumphant hero’ (ibid., p. 137).

Both Flaubert and Genet exemplify extreme cases where severe ‘facticity’, the manner in which consciousness is necessarily embedded in the world, in materiality and in one’s past, harshly limits our freedom to shape our lives. But, precisely because of this, thesecases can reveal to us the hard-fought liberation of a particular freedom from the grip of a destiny to which one does not yield. These cases show that the only facticity of freedomis that freedom is not free not to create freely.

Sartre regards his psychoanalytic-anthropological tests of aesthetic authenticity assuccessful. He therefore claims that we ourselves have created all the ‘passive’ factors that supposedly constrain our freedom to become spontaneous authors of our selves. Atthe very least, our response to them is wholly of our making: ‘passivity does not simply exist; it must continually create itself or little by little lose its force’ (FI, p. 42). In other words, everything depends on how one deals with the hand one is dealt, as exemplified inGenet’s case of homosexuality and criminality—imparted not genetically, socially or


divinely, but by Genet alone. The chief aim of Sartre’s existential psychoanalysis is to illuminate the concrete

formation of aesthetic authenticity by individual choices as to one’s ‘fundamental project’, one’s conscious choice of a style or walk of life. One’s ‘original choice’ (Genet, pp. 187, 250) shapes the total meaning of one’s life and makes one into what one becomes. Sartre makes it clear that these existential-psychoanalytic examinations of ‘fundamental projects’ are based on the phenomenology of totally vacant consciousness.But if the nature of consciousness, which Sartre must paradoxically posit, is genuinelythe same for all, and fundamentally empty, how can one validly make any value-judgements of, or distinctions between, different ‘fundamental projects’? At one stage, Genet’s revolt against the Kantian universal ‘objective Good’ involves choosing to yield to ‘the temptation of Evil’, where ‘freedom tempts itself’ (ibid., pp. 158–9). Could we not claim that even the Nazis were tempted by their own freedom? Less dramatically, why isthe project of making a lot of money grasped as inferior to and less significant than theproject of creating an authentic life? While Sartre speaks of ‘a naked, undifferentiated existence which was capable of being every-thing and which, depending on circumstances, became a murderer or a public prosecutor; in short, humanexistence’ (ibid., p. 588), surely we recognize that we must also take into considerationthe forces that formed the individual’s historical, social and existential situation.

These problems arise from Sartre’s failure to set aside his phenomenology of bad faithand stick to analysis of concrete acts of bad faith. The incompatibility between Sartre’s ontological conclusions as to the impossibility of authenticity and his anthropologicaltheories of its viability remains despite the positive results of his existential-psychoanalytic case studies. Moreover, there are difficulties even on the anthropologicallevel. Clearly, in carrying out the project of authentic creation of one’s self, one may have no choice but to relate to others as means (given the individualistic nature of the‘project’), and, hence, to relate to them in bad faith. Likewise, the others, by submittingto the situation, are also active participants in encouraging bad faith. The social problemof authenticity is highlighted rather than resolved by Sartre’s anthropology.

Still, the ideal of aesthetic authenticity remains the ‘real morality’ (ibid., p. 186) for Sartre. Yet by picking up the figure of Genet the ‘thief who, nonetheless, pursues ‘his original will to assume himself entirely’ (ibid., pp. 350, 353), Sartre tries to tell us that an ethic of authenticity ‘is impossible today’ (ibid., p. 186n.). He quotes Genet’s saying that ‘a philosophy, with its politics and ethics, cannot be derived from theft’ (ibid., p. 185) several times. Sartre adduces this example to demonstrate that on the basis of Nietzsche’s formula for authenticity—one wills one’s self to become what one is—a person, like Genet, who ‘wants to make himself what he is’ (ibid., p. 350) is outside the sphere ofethics because ‘he attains moral solipsism’ (ibid., p. 166).

Ultimately, the relationship between ethics and authenticity as revealed by existentialpsychoanalysis is highly complex: ‘aesthetic values must…contain and reveal the values of ethics’ (ibid., p. 578). While describing Genet’s degradation and his humiliation byothers, Sartre emphasizes Genet’s salvation by his ‘major decision…to take the leap and perform…[a] creative act…in public’ (ibid., p. 426). Freedom and aesthetic authenticityrequire self-overcoming of bad faith. Sartre’s notion of authenticity is ultimatelynegative, despite its creative aspect, because it has no meaning apart from society—it has


no meaning for the individual per se. It requires the liberation of society from bad faith. Yet although there is no ethic of authenticity, authenticity can be introduced into societyby means of the free trans-formation of the ‘objective’ and alienated object (human reality as ensoi) into the ‘subjective’, free and creative person (ibid., p. 599). Bad faith can be transformed into a ‘freedom grasping itself in its absolute gratuitousness’ (ibid., p. 582) and into a state of genuine ‘generosity’ (ibid., pp. 578, 579, 582). To breed generosity in society, our attitude towards ‘the principle of property’ (ibid., p. 579) must be changed, and there must be a ‘radical conversion’ of our social and political systems and fundamental values. In the final chapter of Saint Genet, Sartre delivers a moralistic sermon about our potential freedom to be anything and to invent everything pending thesocialization of authentic self-creation.

IV

We cannot change the ontological impossibility of authenticity, but we can do our best toweaken the social forces that perpetuate our tendency to live in bad faith. We can try tosecure ‘for everyone a margin of real freedom’. Only then can ‘Marxism’ be replaced by ‘a philosophy of freedom’.30 The ontological impasse over the viability of authenticity, far from discouraging Sartre from trying to ‘improve’ human conditions politically, in fact has the opposite effect.31 The ‘radical conversion’ to the ethic of ‘salvation’ is the shift from ontology to political activism.

Sartre’s political ‘conversion’ is bi-directional, encompassing the channelling of our passions into more viable directions—inner conversion, and transformation of society at large from its present state to egalitarianism—external conversion. The two goals are complementary. By inner conversion we learn to desist from trying to become what weare not and cannot be, from seeking the impossible in-itself-for-itself, the abstract being-for-itself, and the material being-in-itself.

The societal transformation to egalitarianism enables us to overcome our tendency to be reduced to being en-soi, abused masochistic objects or sadistic subjects who objectifyothers to satisfy unrealistic needs (BN, pp. 361–412). Masochistic tendencies lead to an alienation from one’s own subjectivity and freedom. ‘Sadism and masochism are the revelation of the Other. They only make sense…before conversion’ (Notebooks, p. 20).

In his later political writings Sartre links social exploitation and political oppression to alienation and regards the latter as an ‘objectifi-cation’ of one’s self by other selves or vice versa. To overcome the socio-political ramifications of this alienation, a new society, free of oppression, must be created. In the Critique, Sartre describes how the collectivity of individuals with common interests, values and goals is a means of attaining greaterindividual freedom and, therefore, of increasing authentic social interaction as opposed toobjectification.

Of course, even a successful ‘radical’ political conversion cannot change our basic ontological predicament. Nevertheless, Sartre attempts to socialize authenticity throughthe socialist movement, which he defines in terms of the creative model of authenticity:


‘It is the movement of man in the process of creating himself; the other parties believethat man is already created.’32 That is, the opponents of socialism are described as exemplifying bad faith.

Sartre’s political activity aims at creating a social fabric which will encourage and assist each individual to engage in self-creation. He envisages a just and free society that overcomes hunger and scarcity. Such a society will greatly lessen the appeal of acts ofbad faith. Once the need to exploit each other for the sake of survival is gone,relationships will become subject-to-subject interactions. Sartre contends that economicscarcity and unjust conditions force human beings to treat one another as instruments, andmake the failure of the search for authenticity almost a foregone conclusion.

But Sartre was realistic about his radical politics. Despite his optimism in the Lévy interviews, he appreciated the impossibility of the Kantian ideal morality: ‘The idea of a kingdom of man becomes the dream of an idea’ (Genet, p. 188). Referring to his descriptions of human relationships in Being and Nothingness, he delineates three scenarios where authentic human interaction might be viable:

If we could all be, simultaneously and reciprocally, both object and subject for each other and by each other, or if we could all sink together into an objective totality, or if, as in the Kantian city of ends, we were never anything but subjects recognizing themselves as subjects…. But we cannot carry matters to an extreme in either direction: we cannot all be objects unless it be for a transcendent subject, nor can we all be subjects unless we first undertake the impossible liquidation of all objectivity. As for absolute reciprocity, it is concealed by the historical conditions of class and race, by nationalities, by the social hierarchy.

(Genet, p. 590)

The factors mentioned at the end of the passage obstruct the path to authentic‘reciprocity’ of ‘human reality…in-society’; yet they can be changed by politicalconversion. There is ‘one’ course which ‘is open to us’, Sartre asserts, and he promises, at the end of his existential psychoanalysis of Genet, to discuss it ‘elsewhere’ (ibid., pp. 598–9).

Thus in Sartre’s later work we can discern a kind of dialectical orientation: first hisexistentialist anthropology will modify Marxism from within by imbuing it with a thirstfor authenticity; then, after the ‘radical conversion’ of society, this search will be carried out spontaneously within the political framework of existentialistic Marxism. It is unclearto what extent this programme succeeded.

In his later, ‘Hegelian’ political writings, Sartre argues that the personal authenticity of one individual can come together with that of another, until this ‘fusion’ ultimately creates a shared social consciousness and solid social fabric. It seems as if his laterpolitical thought, like his early phenomenology, is intended, among other things, todemonstrate the viability of the aesthetic model of authenticity in society as a whole. Thefirst volume of the Critique, for example, is a diagnostic treatise on how ‘practico-inert’ social institutions destroy personal authenticity. This diagnosis underlines the need tocure such social sicknesses by active political action. This attempt to prove that


individual ‘conversion’ to authenticity is possible only within a transformed society canbe seen as a corrective to Being and Nothingness.

I cannot enter into a detailed analysis of Sartre’s political writings here;33 it may not be warranted in any event, since he considered them a ‘failure’. Indeed, he later said the Critique of Dialectical Reason seemed not to have ‘ripened within him’ (Lévy, p. 170). And the venture he planned with Lévy—a re-examination of the fundamental questionsof politics and ethics, to be entitled Pouvoir et Liberté (Power and Freedom) remained unexecuted.

By way of summary, I want to consider whether Sartre’s pessimism about authenticity is in fact warranted.

‘We are beings whose being is perpetually in question’ (Genet, p. 60). Hence not to try to answer the question of authenticity, let alone not to raise it, indicates bad faith andone’s reduction to the status of an object whose ‘being is not in question, it is stable and fixed, like that of objects. In short, it is a being in itself and for others, but it is not a being-for-itself’ (ibid.). Ultimate failure to achieve authenticity is irrelevant because it isthe striving, the overcoming of difficulties and the acceptance of defeats that endows lifewith structure, unity and meaning. As Sartre puts it, ‘to create oneself and to kill oneself come to the same thing. Existence is no longer anything but an interminable death-agony which has been willed’ (ibid., p. 167). Thus authenticity as self-creation is on a par with authenticity as self-destruction. To become author of one’s own self is ipso facto to be author of one’s death. One who looks forward to achieving authenticity ‘pursues [one’s] own nothingness’, and therefore ‘an entire life dooms itself to failure’ (ibid., p. 183). One of the main reasons why failure is imminent is that an individual like Genet ‘wants to derive his being from himself and to derive all his acts from his being’ (ibid., p. 187). Genet’s mistake was that at one point he wanted to be causa sui, to be God, but the most he, like everyone else, could achieve, was to be like God, namely, a freely creative person. And, indeed, in the case of Genet, who saved himself through art and liberatedhimself by writing, ‘the loser wins’ (ibid., pp. 184, 585). In both Nausea and the study of Genet, Sartre describes the artist as an authentic self, liberated from the ‘good’ objective ethos and from the ‘evil’ of nothingness (Genet, p. 422). By making the pour-soi-en-soi‘only the object of…art’, Genet overcame the pull of this impossible fusion. From thatmoment on, for Genet ‘to compose is to re-create himself (ibid., p. 543).

Unquestionably, even in his later years, Sartre’s assessment was not entirely pessimistic, and he did express some guarded optimism regarding authenticity: ‘it suffices to will the failure [to become God] for it to change into a success [for one tobecome like God]’ (Genet, p. 187). The ‘useless passion’ is not completely useless: the art of authenticity is to achieve authenticity by art or creative activity. Sartre construescreativity broadly: in the second of the two Notebooks he characterizes the rearranging of household furniture as creative.

To create or write ‘is to communicate’ and to enter into ‘relations with others’ (Notebooks, p. 423). There and elsewhere a positive tone creeps into Sartre’s discussion of authentic relationships. He refers to ‘authenticity’ several times as ‘a double source of joy’ (ibid., p. 491), speaks of authentic ‘loving’ (ibid., p. 501) and increasingly refers to such notions as ‘gratuitousness’, ‘reciprocity’, ‘gift’ and ‘generosity’ as characterizing authentic relations wherein each person regards the other as an end-in-


itself and not just as a means of furthering her own projects and whims. Such authenticrelationships are already implied in Sartre’s earlier discussion of ‘the look’ (BN, pp. 252–302) in the context of his thesis that in inauthentic relationships, one party is a living‘hell’ who objectifies the other. Sartre’s phenomenology of conscious-ness seems to presuppose an intuitive recognition of the other as a person ‘for-herself’. As Sartre argued in Being and Nothingness, objects do not mirror other objects; therefore the fact that I doindeed see myself reflected or mirrored as an object in the ‘look of the other’ necessarily implies that I see the other, not as an object, but as a subject. Hence, at leastepistemologically, authentic (i.e. subject-object to object-subject) relationships were countenanced as early in Sartre’s thought as Being and Nothingness.

Authenticity in the sense of spontaneous activity in freely creating one’s self does not necessarily entail the Kantian moral kingdom of ends. I relate to my self as an end initself (for example, in my fundamental project of seeking authenticity) and regard othersas potential partners who may help me in carrying out my project. However, if this is allthere is to it, then conflict between myself and others is inevitable, for I will prevent themfrom expressing their own selves spontaneously. A reciprocal situation, in which two ormore individuals enter into meaningful relationships with each other, though rare, isnonetheless not impossible, and it is conceivable that each of them can become anessential element in creating and expressing the other’s authentic self. Mutual generosity, respect and genuine feelings cement such relations. I choose to help the other becomeauthentic by not trying to dominate her and by regarding her as an autonomous personwho can act simultaneously as object and subject in relation to myself. The other’s otherness is accommodated but not assimilated in my self and my life.

Creativity, generosity, unselfish love, etc., are not esoteric values never encountered inthe real world. They have been popular in different cultures and periods. Nevertheless,from the perspective of authenticity, they acquire new meaning, for they connote thegenuine spontaneity of the process of self-determination and of creation of the authentic self.

Sartre realized that the authentic Nietzschean Übermensch ‘can appear only at the conclusion of a social evolution’ (Genet, p. 245). To encourage such evolution he advocated his own brand of socio-political revolution. By the very end, however, Sartre regarded his politics as a total failure. In the next chapter, we shall see whether Camuswas any more successful in developing a socially viable ethic of authenticity.

Notes

1 Mauvaise foi. I render this notion literally as ‘bad faith’ to avoid the problematic issue of ‘self-deception’, which has been the subject of much discussion, and to distinguish it fromthe notions of ‘good faith’ (bonne foi) and ‘inauthenticity’. I do not use ‘inauthenticity’, since if authenticity is not ontologically viable this is also true of its negation.

2 B. Lévy, ‘Today’s hope: conversations with Sartre’, Telos (1980), 155–81 (henceforth Lévy). 3 When Lévy asks Sartre whether this ‘exhausting debate with Marxism’ was prompted by a


desire to overcome the inevitability of ‘bad faith’ as expressed in Being and Nothingness, Sartre answers, ‘Without a doubt’ (Lévy, p. 158).

4 Ibid., p. 162. The notion of le regne des fins was used by Sartre in Cahiers pour une morale(Paris: Gallimard, 1983) (see, e.g., p. 17); trans. D.Pellauer as Notebooks for an Ethics(Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1992) (henceforth Notebooks), p. 10. In these notebooks, which date from 1947/8, Sartre, referring to the ‘Kantian ideal’, calls it ‘the city of ends’ (p. 161; cf. pp. 168–9). We must bear in mind, though, that Sartre valued hispublished works over his unpublished manuscripts, which I only quote here if they do notcontradict his published writings.

5 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N.Kemp Smith (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1965), p. 29.

6 Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. H.E.Barnes (London: Methuen, 1957) (henceforth BN), p. 615.

7 ‘Consciousness of Self and Knowledge of Self’ (1948), in Readings in Existential Phenomenology, ed. N.Lawrence and D.O’Connor (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967), pp. 113–42.

8 The War Diaries, trans. Q.Hoare (New York: Pantheon, 1984) (henceforth WD), pp. 94, 182, 95.

9 Translated in H.Spiegelberg, ‘Sartre’s Last Word on Ethics in PhenomenologicalPerspective’, Research in Phenomenology, 11 (1981), 90–107.

10 Situations, trans. B.Eisler (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1965), p. 234 n. 11 Critique of Dialectical Reason, volume I: Theory of Practical Ensembles, trans. A.Sheridan-

Smith, ed. J.Rée (London: New Left Books, 1976) (henceforth CDR), volume II: The Intelligibility of History, trans. Q.Hoare, ed. A.Elkaiim-Sartre (London: Verso, 1991).

12 The Transcendence of the Ego, trans. F.Williams and R.Kirkpatrick (New York: Noonday,1957) (henceforth TE).

13 ‘Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea of Husserl’s Phenomenology’, trans. J.P.Fell, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 1 (1970), 4–5 (henceforth Int.).

14 See, e.g., WD, pp. 11, 336; note Sartre’s resigned tone at pp. 51, 61, and other places. 15 The motif of watching and judging others is salient in Sartre’s 1944 play In Camera, where

he proclaims: ‘Hell is…other people!’ (In Camera, and Other Plays, trans. S.Gilbert (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), p. 223). One character expresses the transparency of ourconsciousness and the public status of our egos as follows: ‘I’m watching you, everybody’s watching, I’m a crowd all by myself…. It’s no use trying to escape’ (ibid., p. 222). In another play, Lucifer and the Lord, from 1951, we find the same idea: ‘No way of escaping men’ (ibid., p. 169).

16 Translated by P.Mairet (London: Methuen, 1962) (henceforth STE). 17 See Sartre’s phenomenological account in The Psychology of Imagination (London:

Methuen, 1972). 18 Nausea, trans. R.Baldick (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965) (henceforth N), p. 97. 19 Preface to N.Sarraute, Portrait of a Man Unknown, trans. M.Jolas (New York: George

Braziller, 1958), p. xi. 20 “The Childhood of a Leader’, in Intimacy, trans. L.Alexander (London: Panther, 1960)

(henceforth CL), p. 220; cf. M.Brinker, ‘A Double Clearing of the Fog: Sartre’s “The Childhood of a Leader” and its Relation to his Philosophy’, in Commitment in Reflection: Essays in Literature and Moral Philosophy, ed., L.Toker (New York: Garland, 1994), pp.101–19.

21 Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. G.J.Becker (New York: Schocken, 1965), p. 90.


22 Indeed, in his youthful first novel, ‘A Defeat’, he identified with the figure of ‘Frederic’, as he later testified: ‘my first novel…was the story of Nietzsche and Wagner, with me in therole of Nietzsche…a novel that would express my particular way of feeling and myconception of the world’, quoted in Simone de Beauvoir, Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre, trans. P.O’Brien (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), pp. 136, 151. Cf. ibid., p. 157, and M), p. 156.

23 BN, p. 25, and Existentialism and Humanism, trans. P.Mairet, (London: Methuen, 1973)(henceforth EH).

24 De Beauvoir, Adieux, p. 169. In ‘What is Literature?’ Sartre writes: ‘the literary object has no other substance than the reader’s subjectivity…. But on the other hand, the words are therelike traps to arouse our feelings and to reflect them toward us’ (Literature and Existentialism, trans. B.Frechtman, (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel, 1949), p. 45). In an unpublished note he admitsthat ‘What is Literature?’ led to his being a co-founder of Rassemblement Democratique Revolutionnaire (an international socialist organization), much like Mathieu in The Roads to Freedom, who, on tiring of being free to no end, decides in favour of action in the lastunfinished volume, La dernière chance.

25 Cf. Simone de Beauvoir, who claims in Force of Circumstance, trans. R. Howard (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968) (henceforth FC) that in EH ‘Sartre seduced them by maintaining the rights of morality’ (p. 47).

26 Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, trans. B.Frechtman (London: Heinemann, 1988) (henceforthGenet), p. 599.

27 See BN, pp. 557–75. 28 De Beauvoir, Adieux, p. 64. 29 The Family Idiot, trans. C.Cosman (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1981)

(henceforth FI), p. 41. 30 Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, trans. H.E.Barnes (New York: Vintage Books, 1968),

p. 34. 31 He declares in an interview: ‘First, all men must be able to become men by the improvement

of their conditions of existence, so that a universal morality can be created’ (Encounter(London), June 1964, p. 62). In another interview (Le Monde, 18 April 1964) he admits: ‘alienation, the exploitation of men by other men, undernourishment…make metaphysical unhappiness a luxury and relegate it to second place. Hunger—now that is an evil’ (trans. H.Barnes in Existentialist Ethics (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1967), p. 31).

32 R.Howard’s translation (FC, p. 210) is more accurate than that found in Jean-Paul Sartre, The Spectre of Stalin, trans. I.Clephane (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969).

33 But see W.L.McBride, Sartre’s Political Theory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1991), which also claims that Sartre’s political writings ‘continue to capture the spirit of “ethics”’ and that with reference to such phenomena as bad faith and authenticity ‘one can discern a considerable continuity of concerns on Sartre’s part’ (p. 5).


7 Camus’s return to authentic

human morality

Of the few scholars still interested in Camus, most esteem his literary genius butdenigrate his importance as a philosopher.1 Camus himself was to some degreeresponsible for this attitude, on account of his declaration that he was not anexistentialist.2 From the current perspective, however, it is clear that he is very much a part of philosophy. Though, like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, not a philosopher in thetechnical or academic sense, Camus expresses ideas and dilemmas that are intimatelyrelated to the ideal of authenticity.

Chronologically and thematically, Camus is the last thinker on authenticity. Ironically,in his later writings we find regression to an essentialist position that re-introduces a quasi-biological humanistic essence, reminiscent of Rousseau’s human nature, and thus undermines the great revolt of authenticity against the notion of objectivity. UnlikeKierkegaard, who entices us to take an absurd leap of faith, Camus rejects transcendence,adopts a position of strict immanence3 and invites us to live out a rebellious acceptanceof our absurd fate. He encourages us to win authenticity by ‘an act of lucidity as one makes an act of faith’ (LACE, p. 81). This illuminates the dilemma that confronted all the thinkers we have considered: the singularity and the spontaneity of the ideal ofauthenticity imply a clash with the prevailing ethic; yet to resolve this impasse bygranting authenticity a recognized social meaning in turn neutralizes this spontaneity byforcing it into a fixed ontological yoke. In any event, however, Camus rejects thissolution since ontology is meaningless in an absurd world. To deal with the problem,Camus returns to one of the classic teachers of authenticity, Nietzsche.

Camus has great respect for Nietzsche and acknowledges his debt to him.4 His idea that authenticity—‘this desire for unity…this need for clarity and cohesion’5—should embrace the absurd echoes Nietzsche’s claim that inner harmony and the courage toaccept the contradictions as well as the immanence of our world are characteristic of theauthentic Übermensch. The ‘passionate world of indifference’ in which Camus’s heroes are immersed (MS, p. 89) is a result not of weakness, but of strong personalities thatcourageously overcome the never-satisfied need for salvation. This power enables me toadopt a Nietzschean amor fati stance and to ‘accept what is when once I have admitted that I cannot change it’.6 This ‘indifference’ seems incompatible with the deep emotional involvement of Abraham, the ‘knight of faith’. But, like Kierkegaard’s heroes, Camus’s heroes of absurd authenticity, ‘obeying the flame’, commit ‘the existential leap’ (MS, pp.


55–6) into the pathos of authenticity. However, while Kierkegaard’s authenticity still retains some positive content, Camus invites us to accept the immanently absurd world—in the original sense of absurdus: i.e. an incongruous universe devoid of the harmony andmeaning that ordinarily dwell in things through the power of an ordering principleallegedly external to our world. Kierkegaard sought to endow life with authenticexperience which to some degree transcends it. Like Nietzsche, however, Camus rejectsthis transcendence and tries to entice us to shape our lives without seeking such externalmeaning. Sisyphian life in the face of the absurd is the only authentic attitude available tomortals who reject suicide and proudly affirm their lives.

Camus’s two major philosophical essays, The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel, are philosophical commentaries on his understanding of authenticity as it is portrayed in hisnovels, short stories and plays. Camus’s early perspective is found in The Outsider(L’Etranger); that of his transitional period in Caligula; and his later perspective in The Plague and ‘The Guest’. Camus understood that since the ideal of authentic life goes beyond rational discourse it is best evoked by literature rather than exposition. Bygenerating in us deep existential anguish, Camus’s fiction offers us a chance to overcome it by being true to ourselves for the sake of humanity. ‘This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future’ (MS, p. 169).

Camus uses metaphors to entice us into self-change by plunging us without comment into the stark climate of authenticity. Only when we begin to feel it can we proceed to thephilosophical essay, which neither explains nor justifies, but merely describes authenticliving and its consequences. This medium is more abstract and therefore less effective for arousing our pathos than the concrete images in Camus’s fiction.7

Would it be true to say that Camus’s, and for that matter the other philosophers’, works of fiction are really just treatises in literary garb? Can such literary works be reduced tophilosophy? Camus himself juxtaposes literature and philosophy in his treatment ofDostoevsky, Proust and Kafka, commenting that ‘the great novelists are philosophicalnovelists’ (ibid., p. 82). He goes on to explain that

the preference they have shown for writing in images rather than in reasoned arguments is revelatory of a certain thought that is common to them all, convinced of the uselessness of any principle of explanation and sure of the educative message of perceptible appearance.

In this respect the novel is an ‘instrument’ (ibid., pp. 82–3). In a 1938 review of Sartre’s Nausea, Camus maintains that ‘a novel is never anything

but a philosophy put into images. And, in a good novel, the whole of the philosophy haspassed into the images’.8 But if so, why was Camus not satisfied with his literary works?Why did he feel he also had to express his views in the more abstract form ofphilosophical essays, given his belief that no ‘reasoned arguments’ can be adduced for the ideal of authentic life? In his Nobel Prize speech in 1957, Camus states that art, byproviding a concrete, though imaginary, description of authentic life in an immanentworld, is the best means for awakening the greatest number of people. Camus uses fictionto overcome ‘the current nihilism’ and entice readers into adopting the ‘art of living’ in its place.9 He encourages them to fashion their lives into works of art. Why, then, does he

Camus’s return to authentic human morality 120

find it necessary to provide a philosophical commentary on his literary masterpieces? Camus provides a clue, saying that ‘the work of art…is complete only through the

implications of that philosophy’ (MS, p. 83). The consummation of a literary workmobilized for a moral-didactic goal is not necessarily inherent in the work, which, as an aesthetic product, is always complete in its own right. However, in such a work, it isrelevant to ascertain what the author intends to effect in creating it, i.e. to what end it isan instrument. Hence the moral-didactic purpose must be clarified. The theoretical essaysof Camus and other exponents of authenticity explicate the messages implicit in theirfiction. Fiction, with its rhetoric and irony, shakes us, opens us to change and entices us to pursue change. But only the philosophical essay makes clear the purpose of thisenticement and thereby removes any hesitation we may experience in following thetraumatic adventures of the heroes of authenticity. The pathos of absurdity does notsuffice to make us fully aware of the sometimes dangerous consequences facing thosewho try to hold on to it. After completing The Outsider, with its emotional ‘climate’ of a hero who lives and dies absurdly, Camus delineates for us its terminological map andconsequences:

The climate of absurdity is in the beginning. The end is the absurd universe and that attitude of mind which lights the world with its true colours to bring out the privileged and implacable visage which that attitude has discerned in it.

(ibid., p. 17)

By ‘universe’ Camus means ‘a metaphysic’ of ‘all those irrational feelings’ (ibid., p. 16). He describes these feelings ‘by gathering together the sum of their consequences in thedomain of the intelligence, by seizing and noting all their aspects, by outlining theiruniverse’ (ibid., pp. 16–17). Thus Camus moves from literature depicting the ‘feeling of the absurd’ to the phenomenology of the ‘notion of the absurd’.10

I

Unlike the ontologists, Camus rarely uses the term ‘authenticity’. Nonetheless, the concept of authenticity pervades everything he wrote. In the above passage, for example,he speaks of the ‘strange feeling of fidelity’ without which it is almost impossible to live authentically. His fascination with the mythological hero Sisyphus, who attained

All those lives maintained in the rarefied air of the absurd could notpersevere without some profound and constant thought to infuse itsstrength into them. Right here, it can be only a strange feeling offidelity.

(MS, p. 77)


happiness through courageous determination to create his own self and remain loyal to it,despite a life of meaningless torment, is a good example of his preoccupation withauthenticity. Up to the Second World War, a Nietzschean motif is clearly evident inCamus’s thought, and the aesthetic model of authenticity reaches its culmination: ‘the absurd joy par excellence is creation. “Art and nothing but art”, said Nietzsche; “we have art in order not to die of the truth”’ (ibid., p. 77)—or of the spirit of objectivity which stifles personal truthfulness.

Camus approaches the absurd from a personal perspective. He describes the pathos ofone who is seized by a penetrating feeling of absurdity and asks himself the cardinalquestion of ‘whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived’ (ibid., p. 47). In his preface to the English edition, Camus speaks of the personal nature of The Myth of Sisyphus, stressing the appeal of suicide to anyone who experiences the immanence of our world:

This book is…the most personal of those I have published in English…it attempts to resolve the problem of suicide…without the aid of eternal values which, temporarily perhaps, are absent or distorted in contemporary Europe. The fundamental subject…is this: it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning; therefore it is legitimate to meet the problem of suicide face to face. The answer…is this: even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate…even within the limits of nihilism it is possible to find the means to proceed beyond nihilism…. The Myth of Sisyphus…sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert.

The protagonists of absurd authenticity live in a world in which all their actions,including those which lead to suicide, are devoid of reason or meaning. They keenly feelthe lack of any correspondence between their ‘longing for happiness and for reason’ and ‘the unreasonable silence of the world’ (ibid., p. 29). Camus soberly depicts this‘intellectual malady’ and does not explain it away with reference to some‘metaphysic’ (ibid., p. 10). The personal pathos of such individuals rises above the objectivist-normative ethic grounded in reason or in some higher or lower powers such asGod or Nature.

This pathos, which is not a logical ‘conclusion’ of any argument, is Camus’s ‘starting point’ (ibid.). Camus has advanced beyond Dostoevsky’s nineteenth-century hero, Ivan Karamazov, who concluded that if there is no God ‘everything is permitted’ (ibid., p. 57) and no act is of any importance. Camus declares that his hero feels that everything isunconditionally permitted, owing to the ‘deadly climate’ (ibid., p. 29) which lures him into destructive nihilism.

Before proceeding further, it will be useful to distinguish between several types ofnihilism. (1) Metaphysical nihilism asserts that our world is absolute chaos devoid of anyorder, so that no objective, valid knowledge of it is attainable. (2) Epistemological nihilism, ordinarily called scepticism, claims that we are incapable of attaining suchknowledge of our world, our perceptions and cognitions. (3) Ethical nihilism denies any possibility of objectively valid justification of our fundamental values. (4) The type ofnihilism most relevant to Camus is practical nihilism, which can provoke one to


annihilate one’s self by suicide or another’s life by murder. Now ethical nihilism, as justdefined, can certainly be ascribed to Camus. Yet this ethical-theoretical nihilism does not necessarily imply practical nihilism. On the contrary, as Camus tries to show, creativeacceptance of the absurd deters us from turning in this fatal direction.

Indeed, Camus does not write on suicide because it follows from one of the types of theoretical nihilism mentioned above. He maintains no particular metaphysical thesis asto the nature of reality and therefore is not committed to any kind of theoretical nihilism.Rather, Camus limits himself to providing quasi-phenomenological descriptions of ‘pathos’, the ‘elusive feeling of absurdity’: it appears as ‘weariness’, ‘anxiety’, ‘strangeness’, ‘nausea’, etc. (MS, pp. 17–19). Camus insists that the crisis that brings onthe ‘feeling of the absurd’ when ‘one day the “why” arises’ (ibid., p. 18) is utterly arbitrary, and hence beyond argument and justification. The ‘feeling of the absurd’ can have no philosophical justification. However, the crisis it induces is a crisis ofjustification.

‘The stage-sets collapse’ abruptly and our ‘mechanical life’ (ibid., p. 18) demands justification and meaning. Nevertheless, this demand cannot be satisfied:

I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me?

(ibid., p. 45)

The theoretical position taken here by Camus is simply acknowledgement that there canbe no answer. The pathos of the absurd stems directly from the acute realization that thereis an unbridgeable gap between our need for meaning and happiness, and reality, which is unresponsive to this need. We cannot overcome this feeling of absurdity by trying to findsome existential raison d’être, since it is precisely our doubts about the power of ourreason to do so that cause the crisis in the first place. The philosophical attempt toovercome the feeling of absurdity brings us to the point of ‘philosophical suicide’, since by indulging us and providing us with an illusory ‘reason for living’ it also provides us with an ‘excellent reason for dying’ (ibid., p. 11). One who requires reasoned argumentsfor living and finds them in a particular ideology, endangers his life when that ideologycollapses. This collapse can be the impetus to turn to practical nihilism and physicalsuicide.

Hence Camus recommends acceptance and affirmation of life even if it lackstranscendent meaning. The solution to absurdity is not to escape to philosophy or suicide,but, rather, to accept it as a given. The sober and creative life is the authentic solution andindicates an authentic overcoming. To Camus’s generation the war had given little reasonto be hopeful; Camus, like Nietzsche before him, offers hope without reason as theauthentic reaction to the absurdity of immanence embodied in the myth of Sisyphus.

Like the Nietzschean Übermensch, who adopts the existential formula of amor fati, ‘the absurd man says yes’ (ibid., p. 99). In the effort to shape an authentic life in a worldof immanence, the way is the goal, for there is no goal at the end of the way. In spite ofthe fact that his efforts lack purpose, and there is no chance he will fulfil his longings,‘one must imagine Sisyphus happy’ (ibid., p. 99); otherwise one would have to commit


suicide. Admittedly this is not happiness generated by transcendental values or the logicaloutcome of the feeling of absurdity; still, this happiness allows one to function creativelyand vitally. Thus the feeling of absurdity enables one to attain happiness and secular,‘godless holiness’: ‘I conclude that all is well’, says the Sisyphian authentic hero, ‘and [this] remark is sacred’ (ibid., p. 98).

Nonetheless, it could be argued that if the world is devoid of meaning and unable tosustain any absolute moral norms, then this fact about the world cannot, in itself, generateany values. If Camus claims that Sisyphian efforts in a meaningless world are ameaningful value enabling one to overcome practical nihilism, he is guilty of thisfallacy.11 However, a close reading of Camus reveals that he can defend himself againstthis charge. The concept and the experience of absurdity originate in the intrinsicintentional relation between the individual and the world. Camus refers to Husserl and‘the phenomenologists’ in examining ‘the theme of the “Intention”’ (ibid., p. 39). He claims that ‘the Absurd is not in man…nor in the world, but in their presence together’, that is, in their ‘confrontation’ (ibid., p. 30). Anticipating the above critique, he elaborates:

I said that the world is absurd but I was too hasty…. What is absurd is the confrontation of the irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world.

(ibid., p. 24)

Emphasizing that ‘there can be no absurd outside the human mind’ (ibid., p. 31) Camus makes it clear that the absurd is rooted in the subjective human perception of the world’s immanence. Therefore, quite apart from the metaphysical question of whether the worldin itself is in some way transcendent, divine or rational, humans can always express theirunrequited ‘nostalgia’ (ibid., pp. 29, 39, 43, 44) for order and meaning by endowing itwith reason, God and virtue. Thus, Camus does not intend to derive any ‘value’ from facts about the world in itself, as the critic claims, but seeks to make us resilient withinthe immanent sphere of our perceptions, notions and longings.

Camus champions the subjective authentic stance that refuses to give in to promises of‘salvation’. Like Nietzsche, he demands that we liberate ourselves from the yearning forsalvation by overcoming our nostalgia for it. Camus’s determination to withhold from us any ‘metaphysics of consolation’ (ibid., p. 42) makes authenticity all the more vital sincein his eyes it is the only solution capable of withstanding the feeling of absurdity.Because it can never be eliminated, one must, despite the enormous difficulty, accept itand go on living. The way to live with the absurd on the verge of the abyss is not to seekexternal salvation but to turn to self-creation or creation in general.

But why should we not commit suicide and disentangle ourselves from the stifling,ever-present feeling of absurdity? Camus acknowledges the legitimacy of this question and tries to answer it. His discussion of the issue is illuminating in that it gives us a betterunderstanding of authenticity as the only value in our subjective immanent world. ‘The absurd does not liberate; it binds’—it binds us to this immanence. One can avoid the bond only by ‘philosophical suicide’, that is, by grabbing on to something transcendent but illusory. However, since there is nothing there to hold on to, this stance is untenable


and ultimately collapses when we recognize that it is absurd in itself. Granted this,however, one can indeed escape the absurd by its utter destruction, namely, by physicalsuicide.

If ‘the absurd merely confers an equivalence on the consequences of…actions’ and if in a world devoid of any hierarchy of values ‘all experiences are indifferent’, then ‘that of duty is as legitimate as any other’. But suicide, then, also becomes a legitimate option.Just as one can adopt an objectivist ethic and ‘be virtuous through whim’ (ibid., p. 58), one can also commit suicide out of sheer whim. And even if suicide indicates passive‘acceptance’ (ibid., p. 48) it is difficult to argue with the wish to destroy the central component of the intentionality between man and his world that constitutes the absurd.Indeed, Camus admits that ‘in its way, suicide settles the absurd. It engulfs the absurd inthe same death’ (ibid.). Admittedly, this is a personal solution which cannot solve thequestion of absurdity for others, but in any case the feeling of absurdity is a privateconcern of each individual. Even if suicide merely indicates resigned acceptance of theharsh implications of the relationship between the individual and the world and not theovercoming of this absurd—so what?

It might be claimed that physical suicide is not the solution, since it creates a hierarchy of values within which there is one sort of action of ultimate value. In other words, tocommit suicide can be seen as preferring one course of action over all others. But if ourexistence is sheer absurdity, why would suicide be any more valuable than Dr Rieux’s useless efforts to cure his patients in The Plague?

Camus knows that he has no valid argument against suicide. Suicide is an issue subjectto the discretion of each individual who confronts the feeling of absurdity. Camus claimsthat we can ‘escape suicide’ to the extent that we are ‘simultaneously awareness and rejection of death’ (ibid., p. 60). The latter attitude is the ‘revolt’ that gives life its ‘value’ (ibid.)—its authenticity, the only possible value given the absurd. This ‘majestic’ revolt has ‘something exceptional’ about it, for, Camus feels, it displays ‘human pride’ (ibid., p. 48). It is not coincidental that at that point in his essay Camus begins to use first-person sentences such as ‘I must carry…the weight of my own life…alone’ (ibid.).

One possible response to the charge that his solution lacks objective validity ispoignantly expressed by Nietzsche’s hero of authenticity, Zarathustra: ‘ “This is my way; where is yours?”—thus I answered those who asked me “the way”. For the way—that does not exist.’ In my own way I can find pride and sublimely express my will to live authentically. To do so I will continue struggling and overcoming everything in me andmy surroundings that tries to humiliate me and reduce me to suicide. Camus, followingNietzsche, declares: I embrace a lucid and sober attitude, since I want to attainauthenticity, to live intensely but without ‘stage-sets’ that distort my selfhood; hence I turn away from suicide which will prevent me from engaging in revolt, the practicalembodiment of authenticity.

Thus the feeling and notion of absurdity and the constant struggle against their nihilistic implications are necessary conditions of authenticity. ‘I am authentic ergo it is absurd’ is Camus’s existential version of the Cartesian Cogito. ‘Only from chaos is a star born’, Nietzsche claims; and Camus develops this idea, maintaining that only from thefeeling of absurdity and from the complex sensations that constitute its pathos is the


aspiration to authenticity born. This happens when the ‘stage-sets’ of normative ethics ‘collapse’ and the question of where to go—‘suicide or recovery’ (ibid., p. 18)—becomes inescapable.

Absurdity is an extreme existential pathos which reveals inauthentic being. The revoltagainst this feeling, together with resistance to taking shelter under the ‘stage-sets’ of alleged paths to salvation, makes a sober and authentic attitude possible. Physical suicideprecludes adoption of this steadfast stance in the face of the absurd; one must, therefore,‘preserve’ (ibid., p. 46) the spirit of revolt and the Sisyphian relation to the world without yielding to it (suicide) or getting lost on its account (selling out to transcendence). Initself the revolt is of no value, but the impact of the rebellious attitude on the rebelgenerates authenticity, the free and courageous determination to go on living creativelydespite everything.

But in a world devoid of value why grant any meaning at all to authenticity? This is, ofcourse, an arbitrary and free personal choice with no objective or logical validity. Inmaking this choice Camus affirms something stressed by other philosophers ofauthenticity: the search for authenticity is a personal wager in a world where otheroutcomes are no more probable. But if this unique gamble succeeds, our prize is optimal:authentic selfhood.

In ‘this hell of the present’ the hero of absurdity ‘has forgotten how to hope’ (ibid., p. 46). She prefers life without hope to belief in a transcendent world, and takes uponherself ‘the heartrending and marvellous wager of the absurd’ (ibid.). In contrast to Pascal’s famous bet on the eternal survival of the soul, this is a bet on the authenticity of our life. What point is there in such a wager in a Godless world of immanence wherearbitrary probabilities unknown to and uncontrollable by the gambler determine theoutcome? Unlike Pascal, whom he admires,12 but like Kierkegaard, Camus believes that to bet against all logic is the supremely absurd wager which can help us authentically todefy our absurd life. In his own words, ‘at last man will again find there the wine of theabsurd and the bread of indifference on which he feeds his greatness’ (ibid.). Camus is inverting the Christian ritual of the Eucharist to bind us to our immanent world. The heroof the absurd needs ‘indifference’ since he is always ‘tempted’ by ‘religions or prophets, even without gods’ who seduce him to ‘leap’ (ibid., p. 47). Camus uses the concept ofnegative enticement, which may have been inspired by Nietzsche, to describe theapproach of organized religions, Christianity in particular, which aim at diverting us fromthe path to empowering authenticity.13 Faced with these temptations, one can only choose the given world of immanence. The strength of this persistence will increase as we learnto enjoy the given. Though it is limited in principle, there are countless ways to savour itstreasures, for example, the ‘Don Juanism’ which Camus describes as choosing an ‘ethic of quantity’ over that of ‘quality’ (ibid., p. 61).

At this point, however, it is not easy to accept Camus’s approach on the strength of its inner logic, which denies any logic. If ‘all experiences are indifferent’ (ibid., p. 58), and devoid of any value, then the maximization of these experiences still adds up to nothing.Camus himself says that Don Juan, who, in the wake of Kierkegaard’s description of the aesthetic, serves as a model of authenticity in the midst of absurdity, ‘exhausts…his chances of life’ to the point where he ‘has chosen to be nothing’ (ibid., p. 62). In what way is this different from choosing suicide? Since Camus has rejected Kierkegaard’s


teachings regarding the religious sphere of existence and the ‘quality’ of the authentic ‘knight of faith’, and since he regards the ethical-objective sphere as merely a stage-set, all that remains for him is the aesthetic dimension of life. Indeed, Camus sees the realmof the aesthetic as the main source of authenticity in the face of the absurd. Again, this isCamus’s arbitrary personal preference and does not constitute an argument for adoptingthis position. Thus if others are to be persuaded, there remains only literary inducement toauthenticity through fiction and poetic essays.

Camus is in many ways an inverted Kierkegaard. For him, as for Kierkegaard, thenotion of intentionality that sustains the authentic attitude retains a vestige of rational correspondence between the subjective world of human pathos and the absurd worldwhich controls its intensity. ‘Purity of heart is to will one thing’, Kierkegaard claims and leaps into absurd faith. Camus too wants but one thing—to preserve the tension of the absurd in order to continue to rebel against it and to struggle authentically with itspractical implications. Kierkegaard’s absurd under the wing of God resembles Camus’s absurd in the Godless world of immanence. In Camus, too, we ‘leap’ to the dogma of the absurd.

It is also illuminating to compare Camus’s stand to that of Nietzsche. In Nietzsche’s philosophy, everything is open, including this very openness. For Camus, everything isopen except for this openness. However, in Camus, as in Nietzsche, authenticity hasmuch to do with the relation between the absurd authentic individual and society.According to Camus, no ethical rule can be sustained in an absurd world. ‘What rule, then, could emanate from that unreasonable order?’ (ibid., p. 58) asks Camus, and answers: ‘There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behavebadly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules’ (ibid., p. 57). Here Camus alludes to the many self-proclaimed moralists who preach at the city’s gates while themselves eschewing morality. He describes them as having ‘clean’ consciences, because they never use them. For Camus, the ideal of integrity, or, inNietzschean language, truthfulness in life, stands above the objective ethical norms ofhonesty and sincerity. Authenticity reigns ‘beyond good and evil’; it does not require, nor can it have, ethical rules for the rational justification of actions. Authenticity is apersonal, intuitive morality that springs from freedom and spontaneity without anyexternal a priori dictates of Reason, God or History. The authority of authenticity lies initself. Thus Camus’s authentic hero ‘can be virtuous through a whim’ (ibid., p. 58), can experience an inner ‘duty’, can shield his action ‘from any judgment but his own’ (ibid., p. 57). Judgements as to authenticity, for both Nietzsche and Camus, cannot be thesubject of any normative ethics. Only the individual can put herself on trial—a trial in which she is both judge and defendant. Clearly, this leaves open the possibility that thisindividual will be not just a judge, but also a murderer, like Meursault in The Outsider.

Camus’s arsenal for fighting evil-doing is limited—conventional normative ethics is barred, of course. His claim that ‘everything is permitted does not mean that nothing is forbidden’ (MS, p. 58) is not grounded in any argument but is simply an expression of hisinnermost wishes. It is true that the absurd ‘does not recommend crime’ (ibid.), since it lacks any authority to do so, but it neither punishes nor restrains criminal atrocities andcannot even recommend that they be shunned. If ‘duty is as legitimate as any other experience’, (ibid.) the murder of the Arab on the Algerian beach is no less legitimate.


Nor is authenticity responsible for crime. Furthermore, it too does not protect the victim.Thus the real test of authenticity is whether, without cosmic or social police, without anyfear of transcendental punishment or legal sanction, one chooses not to commit crimesagainst others. The authentic hero of the absurd displaces normative ethics onto the realmof personal, intuitive and spontaneous morality.

Having chosen to live in society—that is, having decided against suicide—the authentic hero is obliged to pay the ethical price for his desire to live authentically, whichmay generate conflict with the public ethic. Cases of conflict are frequent, since theauthentic posture constitutes an incessant affront to anything which attempts to controlthe subjective pathos of authenticity. Yet this conflict is essential. The Sisyphian strugglein the face of the absurd paradoxically demands that the individual act within society andits boundaries, even if this entails rebellion. Often the revolt fails, since there is notranscendental guarantee of its final success, and even Sisyphus tires of endlesslyclimbing his mountain. Like Zarathustra, who left the cave where his authenticity wasformed but which lacked any human-practical content, so too Sisyphus, despite the factthat ‘his fate belongs to him’, will stop his struggle ‘towards the heights’ and return ‘towards his rock’ (ibid., pp. 98–9). For there to be any value in Sisyphus’ authenticity, wrested with so much effort from the rock of absurdity, someone must assert it as a valuethat has significance for society, if only at its margins. But is authenticity viable insociety? This question has not yet been addressed, though it has been strikinglyarticulated. There are some clues as to its answer in The Outsider.

II

In the 1956 preface to the American edition of The Outsider, Camus writes:

Meursault doesn’t play the game…he refuses to lie. To lie is not only to say what isn’t true. It is also and above all to say more than is true, and, as far as the human heart is concerned, to express more than one feels…. He says what he is, he refuses to hide feelings, and immediately society feels threatened.

(LACE, p. 336)

These remarks have led several commentators to claim that Meursault is an earnest heroof total sincerity, and a model of honesty who shuns any lie.14 Camus probably had such commentators in mind when, in 1959, he answered the question ‘Is there a theme in your work that you think is important and has been neglected by your commentators?’ with one word: ‘Humor’ (ibid., p. 362). He was referring to the genre of humour mostappropriate to the discussion of authenticity—irony, to which Camus dedicated a whole essay in a collection that bears a Kierkegaardian title, ‘The Wrong Side and the Right Side’.15

For Camus, immanence and irony are closely connected on many levels. For example, there is an inherent tension between the means of expression and the meanings expressed,


a tension which invokes the ironic posture. Camus’s key moral terms, such as justice and happiness, are never defined or rigorously examined. Camus’s irony and indirect style of communicating have much in common with Kierkegaard.

In The Outsider, until the moment he is sentenced to death, Meursault represents the honest and sincere hero who acts ad absurdum according to the prevailing ethos, exploding it from within. This gives rise to a pathos of authenticity which graduallyasserts itself as he awaits the guillotine. Recall how Kierkegaard, using irony and indirecttactics, exploded the aesthetic sphere of existence from within. Camus similarlyradicalizes the honest type, who lives the ethic of sincerity without any compromise, tothe point where his society finds him unbearable and rejects him for embodying thisimpossible ideal.

As noted in the first chapter, sincerity and honesty are attributes of one who livesaccording to the ethic of objectivity and implicitly adopts the correspondence theory oftruth. Sincerity and honesty are found where there is a correlation between feelings,words and acts; when one does not hide anything from the public eye. This is exactlyhow Meursault lives—by strictly applying the correspondence theory to his life. He does not ‘say more than is true…he says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings’. Camus demonstrates that society, which upholds the ethic of objectivity, sincerity and honesty, isnot prepared to allow in its midst one who embodies the spirit of this ethic perfectly.

A society built on double standards, hypocrisy and worn-out slogans cannot tolerate a hero who demonstrates that virtually all its members are ‘strangers’ to its ethic, ‘outsiders’ who cannot live up to its demands. This is the real danger Meursault represents and the reason why the prosecutor proclaims him ‘a menace to society’.16

The prosecutor asks for ‘the capital sentence’ because ‘This man has…no place in a community whose basic principles he flouts without compunction’ (Outsider, p. 102). Meursault is punished not for the murder, base as it is, but because of his utter sincerity,which calls into question the most ‘honest’ citizens in his community. Indeed, as Camus stresses in his commentary on The Outsider: ‘In our society any man who does not weepat his mother’s funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death’ (LACE, p. 335).

Like Kierkegaard’s Don Juan, Meursault serves as a Trojan horse which threatens toattack from within the fundamental moral values of its society. The real Meursault,behind the ironic screen, is ‘outside’ this ethic, alienated from its double standards. Recallthat absurdity is the lack of harmony between one’s expectations and behaviour on the one hand, and an indifferent world on the other. For individuals like Meursault who feelthis absurdity intensely, values such as honesty and sincerity are meaningless. WhenMeursault acts according to these values, the result is mechanical, almost automaticbehaviour, that allows no exception or compromise, as called for by Kant’s categorical imperative. Indeed, Meursault acts piously, as prescribed by this ethic, but little by littlebegins to perceive the hypocrisy and hollowness of its watchdogs—the examining magistrate, the press, the judge, the prosecutor, the chaplain, and so on. He becomesaware of the shortcomings of this ethic, and, while in prison, turns to his own self and toan authentic pathos that emerges in the face of his impending death. He does not retreatfrom this new stance, in spite of the chaplain’s promises of salvation and eternity.

The story is clearly divided into two parts: a first, ironic section where Meursault witnesses the collapse of the ethic of sincerity and begins to feel the absurd; and a second


where he becomes conscious of the notion of the absurd and reflects upon his life. Heaffirms his life and authentically faces his imminent death.

The crucial question is whether Camus thinks that, without God, one is permitted to kill in the pursuit of authenticity. I do not refer to the legality of such an act, sinceMeursault himself admits that despite the fact that he is not ‘conscious of any “sin”; all I knew was that I’d been guilty of criminal offence’ (Outsider, p. 116). But does Camus agree with Kierkegaard that for the sake of authenticity one is permitted to ‘suspend’ all moral considerations and set aside ethics? Initially, it seems that Meursault indeedsuspends ethics or even confronts the accepted order to form his authenticity.

This understanding of the story, however, ignores its literary structure and Camus’s basic intuitions concerning personal authenticity. We must bear in mind that Meursaultdoes not become a hero of authenticity because he kills the Arab without any reasonablemotive. His authenticity is acquired only after the murder and, more precisely, after he issentenced to death. It is impossible, on the inner logic of Camus’s absurd, for Meursault to become authentic by virtue of only one act, however extreme. If all acts are devoid ofmeaning and value, murder too is valueless; hence it cannot bestow upon Meursault anyvalue, and certainly not authenticity.

In The Outsider Camus distinguishes between the ethic of sincerity, or any other valuederived from universal reason, and authenticity as an intimate pathos of the self.Meursault’s authenticity does not spring from what Gide has called an acte gratuit, an act devoid of any purpose, reason and meaning, like the murder of the Arab in the first partof the story, but from the manner in which he faces his death. In awaiting the executionof his sentence Meursault’s authenticity is tested in the most taxing way possible—it is tested by what Heidegger, whose influence on Camus here is undeniable,17 calls ‘Being-towards-death’. Meursault’s integrity lies in his not lying to himself about his feelingsand convictions and not compromising about what matters to him most, even in theshadow of the guillotine. Meursault goes authentically to his death, reconciled with hisself and his earthly and limited happiness.

Camus thus intimates not that authenticity licenses murder, but, rather, that it asks us todie while affirming our lives: not life in general, as the highest human value, but our ownindividual lives. The concluding sentences of the story sound as if they were taken fromNietzsche, where ‘the eternal recurrence of the same’ is the loftiest criterion of personal authenticity. Echoing Nietzsche’s idea, Meursault, without any resentment or remorse,pronounces: ‘And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again...I laid my heart open to thebenign indifference of the universe…. I’d been happy, and…was happy still’ (ibid., p. 120). To be happy while awaiting death at the guillotine? Is this the happiness of amasochist? Of course not. Meursault loves his life and enjoys the small pleasures it offers him, but his roots in this earthly life grow yet deeper as he approaches death. At thatmoment Meursault feels and perceives the harmonious bond between his feelings ofabsurdity and the world which, despite or because of this absurdity, is his. It is this insight that brings happiness to Meursault, as it does to his philosophical twin Sisyphus.

The ‘outsider’ is thus a hero of immanence, and the name is therefore an intentionalirony. Those who believe in religions, transcendental principles, objective reason,political and messianic ideologies and the other ‘isms’, are the genuine outsiders in our world, which becomes, for them, merely a transitory stage, a narrow corridor to the other


world or to personal or political salvation. Escape from our life here and now is nihilismpar excellence, Camus contends, following Nietzsche. It amounts to annihilating the sole life we shall ever have. This type of escape makes us alienated strangers to our lives.Meursault is an outsider to these strangers and hence the only one who is actually athome. He affirms his life and does not flee from immanence at its end to embrace thechaplain and shield himself in God’s embrace. Thus Camus is describing the innerjourney of one who achieves authenticity in the face of death, but he does not justify thisunjustifiable journey.

In the story, Camus never explicitly mentions ‘authenticity’, but its importance can be inferred from another story, where his intentions are more explicitly presented. I amreferring to A Happy Death (La Mort heureuse), published posthumously, in which there is a sharp and explicit division of the story into two parts, each containing five chapters.The first part, which was actually an early experimental version of The Outsider, describes the inauthentic and routine pattern of Mersault’s (sic) life. Mersault ‘was ridding himself…of himself as well’ (HD, p. 22). Following the murder of a rich invalid,in the second part of the story, Mersault secures a happy solitude for himself uponrealizing ‘that his rebellion was the only authentic thing in him, and that everythingelsewhere was misery and submission’ (ibid., p. 41).

In his review of The Outsider, Sartre stresses the link between Meursault’s notion of the absurd and the literary style Camus employs to describe the climate of this absurd. Herefers to the atomistic sentences in the present tense that lack any rational connectionbetween them. They give the impression that each moment of the hero’s life is completely separated from all others. No rational explanation is provided, and there is noattempt to enable the reader to understand the some-times bizarre acts of Meursault. The sentences simply depict arbitrary facticity, providing neither softening tone normeaningful context. This description of the intimate union between literary style and thenature of the absurd applies equally, and perhaps even more, to Camus’s attempt to reduce ad absurdum the ‘objective’ ethic of complete sincerity. In his distinctively sparestyle, Camus builds a one-to-one correspondence between Meursault’s acts and his feelings. These sentences clearly reveal that nothing is hidden, that everything isabsolutely transparent and public; the hero’s heart is in perfect accord with his deeds. Use of first-person language and the present tense allows us the privilege of entering into our hero’s innermost life, only to discover that there is nothing to uncover: no hiddenmotives, no implicit feelings, only a few basic instincts such as sexuality and fear. Thistotal disclosure is mandated so that readers will be able to track the ethic of sincerityclosely, with nothing omitted—there are no secret desires or private fantasies to mystify the proceedings.

In the first part of The Outsider the language is terse: background is left out anddescriptions lack softness. Only expressions of rejection or approval are recorded, thoughwithout justification or explanation. The narrative is so hollow it seems to parody theBritish empiricist ‘bundle’ theory of the self. This extremely harsh portrait of theobjective ethic of sincerity is thus ironic, ultimately exploding to reveal the unviability ofunidimensionality in the realm of human emotions and intentions. After this ethic isravaged by the murder, Camus devotes the second part of the novel to describingMeursault’s feelings, motives and world outlook. The reflective mood is especially


salient in the dialogues forced on Meursault by the prison chaplain. This second part,unlike the first, is marked by a sentimental tone and a sense of happiness. In a subjectiveand very personal tone, it ends with affirmation of his life.

In his Nobel speech, Camus suggested that literature should disoriente us and challenge our most fundamental assumptions. In this novel Camus does exactly that—he challenges the ethos most of us consider sacred. We begin, along with Meursault, to see thepreposterous in the ethic of sincerity, and we are induced, with the hero, to feel estrangedfrom it.

Camus assumes that lucid acceptance of immanence is the only possible authenticattitude for one who feels the absurd and perceives its consequences. What constitutesacceptance of immanence? One must see that one is responsible for one’s deeds and misdeeds, desires and aspirations, and say loudly: despite the worthlessness andearthliness of my life, despite the pain and disappointment awaiting those who attempt torealize their longings, I will not forsake my legitimate will to be happy.

This attitude is expressed in the metaphor of the sun, which appears in almost all the stories and essays that preceded The Outsider.18 It symbolizes awareness of the immanent nature of the world at a time when the ‘stage-sets’ collapse and the ethic which formerly guided our behaviour appears unreliable and empty. The sun metaphor, which isalso found in the final sentences of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, raises the question of Camus’s view on the problem Nietzsche posed regarding the viability of the authentichero in society. Does Camus imply in this story that since authenticity is a state of mindor subjective pathos, it is necessarily individualistic and independent of society at large?Does the sun of authenticity shine exclusively for isolated individuals who, whileremaining on the margins of society, are impelled to commit antisocial crimes and thendie? This seems incompatible with the message at the end of Thus Spoke Zarathustra that the sun shines for us all, intimating that there is, indeed, communal authenticity.

At this stage Camus seems to say: Fine, I can do without society’, an attitude personified by his psychopathic hero Caligula. However, in the play Caligula, written around the same time as The Outsider, Camus rejects the view of radical individualisticauthenticity as invariably leading to destructive nihilism.

III

Camus uses the figure of Caligula, the unrestrained and bloodthirsty tyrant, as a reductio ad absurdum argument against practical nihilism, the view that nothing is of value since ‘[n]o matter. It all comes to the same thing in the end. A little sooner, a little later.’19 The ‘triumph‘ of this destructive nihilism ‘would mean the end of everything’ (Caligula, p. 53) for ‘a man can’t live without some reason for living’. Inevitably, Caligula, the nihilistic hero of authenticity in the midst of absurdity, comes to a tragic end. LikeKierkegaard’s Abraham, his ‘purity of heart’ drives him ‘to follow the essential to the end’ (ibid., p. 98), but this end is not the leap to absolute faith, but rather a leap to absolute nothingness. Caligula is an illustration of the failure of lonely authenticity.


Caligula, who wanted to be God, determining the fates of others, declares at the end of his violent and suicidal life: ‘I have chosen a wrong path, a path that leads to nothing. My freedom isn’t the right one’ (ibid., p. 103). The failure of negative freedom—the freedom from ethics, from the society of one’s fellows and from nature (for Caligula aspires tocontrol nature)—will inspire the audience to seek authenticity within a responsible social context.

It is intentional that Camus pursues these motifs in a play rather than a novel or philosophical essay. Well-attended performances—Caligula was staged hundreds of times in Paris alone—often have a powerful impact on audiences and can thus function as an effective vehicle of enticement. Around that time Sartre too was producing plays ofintense existential import which focused on the ideal of authenticity. Theatre is a usefulmedium for conveying such messages because it enables them to be presented in an awe-inspiring manner. Viewing the horrors of nihilistic authenticity, the atrocities committedby Caligula, virtually eliminates any temptation to follow Caligula’s example. The play evokes the ‘climate’ of the absurd and the capriciousness of its heroes, and highlights the fact that these characters have no real past and act accordingly. This is stressed byCaligula’s descriptions of the present as ‘an end of memories; no more masks’ (ibid., p. 50). Everything is uncovered and exteriorized on the stage; everything happens and isreported in the present tense. Like the unconnected, atomistic narrative of The Outsider, the play consists of episodes that are unconnected with each other. Every event occurs asif ex nihilo and is causally unrelated to preceding incidents, a perfect mechanism forconveying the senseless climate of the absurd and its concrete horror.

Camus staged this play at the end of the Second World War, that terrible war in whichnihilism reached a barbaric climax. The impact of the war on Camus was no less decisivethan on Sartre, although in response to it Camus did not turn to the authenticating politicsof existentialist Marxism. He did, however, manifest a decided transition from thenegative freedom and authenticity of the heroic but lonely individual to the sociallyconscious humanism of The Rebel and The Plague. Indeed, already by 1939—convinced that only a blind alley, the guillotine or unrestrained slaughter, awaited the hero whosought authenticity in isolation—Camus writes in the Alger-Républicain that ‘to establish the absurdity of life cannot be an end but only a beginning’.20 The absurd is negative, but revolt against its confines is a positive route to authentic freedom. This shift fromnihilism to humanism took place before the public eye—it is manifested and even justi-fied in Caligula. In contrast to Sartre’s political humanism, Camus’s version of authenticity is better described as immanently humanistic.

Meursault and Sisyphus are victims of society and its ethos. In Caligula, on the other hand, Camus explores what happens to an individual at the top of the social pyramid whocan single-handedly determine the social ethos. Like Meursault, who feels only contempt for the double standards of the prevailing ethic, especially in reference to the value ofsincerity, Caligula ridicules honesty and bourgeois respectability. By his words andactions Caligula manifests ironic scorn for everyday ‘honesty’.21 The play mocks the bourgeois values of the patricians who act as its tragic chorus, as the voice of theaccepted ethos. This chorus of patricians stands in striking contrast to Caligula, who isdesperately attempting to shape his own authenticity as well as to ‘point out’ to others ‘the way to freedom’ (Caligula, p. 46).


In Act I the patricians repeat the empty slogans of a moral code that has. lost its credibility. Caligula, on the other hand, sums up the real state of the world’s affairs lucidly and bitterly: ‘Men die; and they are not happy’ (ibid., p. 40). How is one to find happiness in this absurd and ephemeral world without fleeing to the illusions and deceitof the bourgeois ethic? Caligula is preoccupied with this existential dilemma until hisunhappy end. He rebels absurdly against this absurd, seeking to be as a ‘god on earth…to tamper with the scheme of things’ so that ‘men will die no more and at last behappy’ (ibid., p. 48). Caligula’s absurd revolt against the absurd intensifies its absurdity until its inevitable collapse. Caligula states that he does not ‘need to make a work of art’ since ‘I live it’ (ibid., p. 95), thereby becoming an authentic hero in line with the aesthetic model.

The play graphically presents us with a choice between the inauthentic bourgeois ethic of honour, sincerity and a fat bank account, and the abyss of the nihilistic jungle thatswallows up Caligula, though not before he himself has slaughtered many of his fellow-citizens. Indeed, Caligula ‘pushes the absurd to its logical conclusions’ (ibid., pp. 82–3), demonstrating that if there is no transcendent meaning to life there is no convincingreason to subject one’s actions to moral constraints. Immanence, therefore, can lead directly to the deadly embrace of practical nihilism, symbolized by Caligula’s monstrousness. Caligula, like Meursault, accepts his impending death since he ultimatelyunderstands that no one can save himself on his own—that one cannot live authentically and freely at the expense of the freedom of others, or by repressing their right to theirown authenticity. Only within the framework of human community is authenticity viable. Self-overcoming and creation of one’s self can be performed with others but not against them. As Camus testified in a programme note to a production of Caligula by Hébertot:

If his integrity consists of his denial of the gods, his fault is to be found in his denial of men. One cannot destroy everything without destroying oneself…. Caligula’s story is that of a high-minded type of suicide. It is an account of the most human and most tragic of mistakes. Caligula is faithless towards humanity in order to keep faith with himself. He consents to die, having learned that no man can Save himself alone and that one cannot be free by working against mankind.22

Camus understood that he had to give some content to the ideal of authentic life. This isthe background to his philosophical essay The Rebel, and its literary parallel The Plague, where Camus casts the authentic hero in an active social role.

IV

Camus’s second essay, written in 1951, attempts to solve the dilemma of authenticity insociety. It elaborates on the central theme of Caligula, the difference between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ freedom. In The Rebel this idea reappears as the distinction between authentic


‘metaphysical rebellion’ and ‘historical’ rebellion. The latter is political revolution engendered by ideology resorting to totalitarian regimes and mass murder to justify itsparticular absolutes. Camus calls such historical rebellion ‘collective suicide’.23 It arises from the nihilism that develops when individuals are ‘isolated and cut off from [their] roots’ (Rebel, p. 64); it always ends ‘in chaos’ (ibid., p. 65).

The shift from Camus’s pre-war views to this socially oriented humanism also finds literary expression in ‘Letters to a German Friend’, a series of four letters written around 1943. In them Camus argues that the Nazis resorted to violence and political suppressionto fill the ethical void that had opened up as feelings of absurdity spread among themasses. In a letter written to a Nazi friend, he writes:

We both thought that this world had no ultimate meaning…. But I came to different conclusions from the ones you used to talk about…. You supposed that in the absence of any human or divine code the only values were…violence and cunning…that the only pursuit for the individual was the adventure of power, and his only morality, the realism of conquests…. Where lay the difference? Simply that you readily accepted despair and I never yielded to it…. I merely wanted men to rediscover their solidarity…. I chose justice in order to remain faithful to the world. I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one.24

In these letters Camus tries to clarify retrospectively how the two reached suchcontradictory conclusions: how his friend became a zealous Nazi while Camus, as amember of the Resistance, fought the Nazis to defend ‘Europe’ as ‘a home of the spirit’ (LGF, p. 22). Like The Rebel, the letters teem with unequivocal value-judgements: just as Caligula’s freedom was not ‘right’, so too the nihilistic barbaric Europe of hisfriend ‘is not the right one’ (ibid., p. 23). Camus, however, belongs to the ‘free Europeans’ (ibid., p. 4) who fight ‘for the distinction between…energy and violence, between strength and cruelty’ (ibid., p. 10). Yet Camus is the first to declare that in thisabsurd world such judgements are devoid of meaning. How then does he justify them?What distinguishes an authentic rebellion from one that is nihilistic and destructive? Bywhat criteria is Camus’s Europe preferable to the Third Reich?

Nietzsche’s distinctions between the revolt of the ‘slave’ and that of the ‘master’, and between negative and positive patterns of power, are rooted in his psychological andgenealogical insights, and not in any a priori ontological approach to human nature. YetCamus does not present us with any genealogy or anthropology. Instead, his attack onpractical nihilism—the road to the concentration camps and the ‘isms’ of the future—is based on humanism and human nature.

In ‘Letters’ Camus speaks of ‘the truth of man’, and in The Rebel (pp. 13–14) asserts that ‘in every act of rebellion, the rebel… experiences…a complete and spontaneous loyalty to certain aspects of himself’. The rebel is one who is fed up with injustice andstands up for his dignity and for oppressed humanity. Rebellion creates values. Andinsofar as ‘values are common to himself and to all men’ (ibid., p. 16), authenticity, as a supreme value, belongs to ‘a natural com-munity’ (ibid.) and is not exclusively sustained


by remarkable individuals like Meursault or Caligula. ‘The individual is not, in himself alone, the embodiment of the values he wishes to defend. It needs all humanity, at least,to comprise them’ (ibid., p. 17). Rebellion thus makes authenticity socially viable andawakens the individual’s self-respect and sense of the self as ‘the supreme good’ (ibid., p. 15). Camus now thinks that, in isolation from community, values are worthless, sinceauthenticity requires ‘the kind of solidarity that is born in chains’ (ibid., p. 17) or in a plague, etc.

Camus addresses Sartre’s claim that ‘existence precedes essence’, rebutting it as follows: ‘analysis of rebellion leads at least to the suspicion that, contrary to thepostulates of contemporary thought, a human nature does exist, as the Greeks believed.Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving?’ (ibid., p. 16). Camus thus regards human rebellion in history as proof of the existence of ‘a human nature’ that precedes the rebellious attitude. Like Rousseau, Camus seeks to return to an authenticity rooted in this natural humanity. The ‘natural humanism’ he argues for in this essay starts with the rebellious posture, but uses concepts reminiscent of Rousseau’s biological model to develop an authenticity capable of countering the lethalmanifestations of modern nihilism. In place of the traditional cosmic police-God, Camus offers a ‘metaphysical’ view of ‘human solidarity’ (ibid., p. 17). He refers, in this context, to ‘humanitarianism’ as ‘represented by Bentham and Rousseau’ (ibid., p. 18), claiming that ‘man’s love for man can be born…in human nature’ (ibid.).

Thus notwithstanding his revolt against Sartre, Camus also reverts to the objectivist-essentialist paradigm. He does not, however, unreservedly embrace Rousseau. In additionto the biological paradigm, one can also discern the aesthetic model of authenticity in thelate Camus. To rebel is to create one’s authentic self despite obstacles laid down bycommissars of various stripes. To rebel is to create one’s authenticity in a world of immanence, a world lacking any transcendental telos or rational principles. Camuscontends that we can write our own lifestories only if there are no other potential authors.Thus Camus creates a sort of synthesis between the biological and the aesthetic model ofauthenticity: the revolt arises from human nature, but its end is to create the self.

Camus draws an analogy between his notion of the absurd and Descartes’s method. Indeed, he considers himself a Cartesian rebel against the absurd: ‘the real nature of the absurd…is an experience to be lived through, a point of departure, the equivalent, in existence, of Descartes’ methodical doubt’ (Rebel, p. 8). Cartesian doubt reveals the foundation-stone upon which Descartes erected his rationalist philosophy, just as theauthenticity of selfhood formed by the attempt to rebel against the absurd providesmodern man with something positive to hold on to. Just as doubt is the sole guarantee ofcertainty, so ‘the first and only evidence…within the terms of the absurdist experience, is rebellion’ (ibid., p. 10). Given that rebellion is a collective enterprise, Camus concludes: ‘I rebel—therefore we exist’ (ibid., p. 22).

However, the goal of Camus’s rebellion is not rational certainty but the construction ofvalues against the background of the wreckage of rationalist metaphysical ethics. HenceCamus’s aim is not cognitive but conative: actively to ‘transform’ (ibid., p. 10) man into the authentic creator of his selfhood. At this point Camus quotes Nietzsche:‘ “My enemies,” says Nietzsche, “are those who want to destroy without creating their ownselves.” He himself destroys but in order to create’ (ibid., p. 9). In the chapter on


‘Nietzsche and Nihilism’ Camus stresses the positive implications of Nietzsche’s teachings on authenticity, drawing a parallel between Nietzsche and Descartes: ‘Instead of methodical doubt, he practiced methodological negation.’ He then quotes from Nietzsche: ‘To raise a new sanctuary, a sanctuary must be destroyed’ (ibid., p. 66). The new sanctuary, for both thinkers, is authenticity as self-creation. This value underlies Camus’s claim that every purely nihilistic revolt is basically inauthentic since it destroysbut does not encourage reconstruction of positive life-patterns.

Camus emphasizes the negative power of the rebellion against what ‘is’ for the sake of creating authenticity—what is not. This is another Nietzschean idea: one becomes what one is when one abstains from being what one is not. Echoing Caligula, Camus asserts that the feeling of absurdity is only a starting-point. To move on from that point requiresa positive attitude. The feeling and the notion of the absurd presume certain inherentvalues according to which we judge the absurd to be absurd. To feel absurdity is to say‘no’ out of a spirit of rebellion, and thus to say ‘yes’ to something not given at present, but sought after. Hence rebellion is at the same time negation and affirmation. To say‘no’ is to set limits and to indicate that within these boundaries certain values are non-negotiable. Camus mentions three interrelated values that endow us with authenticity inthe face of the absurd: (1) our humanity, given our personal fates; (2) universal human nature; (3) solidarity.

Camus turns to the problem of the inauthentic solution to the dilemma of absurdity,namely, totalitarian ideologies that lead to mass murder: ‘if we deny that there are reasons for suicide, we cannot claim that there are grounds for murder’ (ibid., p. 7). As before, here too Camus adopts the attitude of amor fati in the face of immanence. Now, however, he provides a humanist-essentialist account of human nature which views lifeas a supreme value.‘Human life is the only necessary good’ (ibid., p. 6), he declares, thus rejecting suicide, murder and indifference to, or passive acceptance of, the murder ofothers. Life enables us to live ‘the desperate encounter’ between our humanity and ‘the silence of the universe’ (ibid.). Were we to ask Camus why such an encounter has value,he would undoubtedly reply that the confrontation moulds personal authenticity. Theideal of authenticity, then, is the force that averts suicide and murder, which threaten tocut short this vital encounter.

It is paradoxical, however, that in spite of his rejection of the ‘crimes of logic’ (ibid., p. 3), Camus himself uses logic to attack certain rationalizations offered to justify murder.Camus is aware that ‘the only coherent attitude based on non-signification would be silence’; therefore ‘the absurd in its purest form, attempts to remain dumb’ (ibid., p. 8). But an authentic person creates; thus authenticity requires speech and communication.Moreover, speaking out is a pragmatic necessity if others are to be enticed to becomerebels and to seek authenticity as an antidote to practical nihilism. This raises anotherquestion: what is the point of inciting to anything in this pointless world of absurdity?Camus can answer that what he is trying to do is to induce us not to be induced and ledastray by alluring mirages beyond our human essence—just as Nietzsche sought to provide us with salvation from our desperate need for salvation. Camus thinks that livingwith contradictions is preferable to not living at all, especially as ‘this basic contradiction… accompanied by a host of others’ (ibid., p. 8) incites us to rebel, to attempt to overcome them, and to create, thereby ensuring an aesthetically authentic life.


Authentic rebellion manifests the inherent human passion for life and self-respect. The rebel attempts to reaffirm her authentic selfhood in the face of the forces that threaten toinvade or subjugate it, to reaffirm her dignity as a free human being. Hence rebellion isconstructive, like Nietzsche, Camus uses various techniques of literary enticement:metaphors (e.g. those related to ‘masters’ and ‘slaves’), figurative speech, imagery, drama, and so on. However, unlike Nietzsche, Camus is sure that Zarathustra left his caveand returned to society to incite it to ongoing rebellion for the sake of an authentic ‘sense of honour’ and ‘pride’.

This element of pride, central to our ‘human nature’, is dramatically depicted in The Plague. Dr Rieux, upon finding himself involved in ‘an absurd situation’, manages to invoke the ‘pride that’s needed to keep going’25 to fight the epidemic in Oran, despite thepoor results of his relentless efforts. In this allegorical story Rieux is portrayed as theSocrates of authenticity. He remains in the city to do ‘the best he can’ (Plague, p. 117) although he can flee, as many indeed do. He remains at his post ‘following the dictates of his heart’ (ibid., p. 272) out of sheer natural humanism that does not follow from anyhigher principle. To Tarrou’s question

Why do you yourself show such devotion, considering you don’t believe in God?…. Rieux said that if he believed in an all-powerful God he would cease curing the sick and leave that to Him. But no one in the world believed in a God of that sort…and this was proved by the fact that no one ever threw himself on Providence completely.

(ibid., p. 116)

No one, Kierkegaard would reply, but Abraham the authentic knight of faith. And Rieuxis thus his atheistic counterpart. Just as Abraham’s authenticity was tested and forged inan extreme existential situation, so Rieux’s humanistic authenticity was acquired duringthe plague, which helped men to ‘rise above themselves’ (ibid., p. 115). But there is one significant difference: Abraham’s journey was solitary, whereas Rieux was a physicianwho upheld the community ethic (‘the law was the law, plague had broken out, and he could only do what had to be done’, ibid., p. 79) and his own professional code of ethics.At the end of his ordeal Rieux ‘could feel himself at one with…these people’ (ibid., p. 278). His authentic freedom was definitely, as Camus would say, ‘the right one’.

V

Our basic ‘sense of honour’, another integral part of our human essence according toCamus, is vividly portrayed in his short story ‘The Guest’.26 The story has a simple plot, and is written in a meticulous style similar to that of The Outsider. It tells of a French teacher, Daru, who lives in a remote schoolhouse on the edge of the Algerian desert. Oneday an old gendarme brings over an Arab who ‘killed his cousin with a billhook’ during a family squabble (Guest, p. 70). He hands the man to Daru, telling him that ‘the order’ is


to deliver him to police headquarters in the nearby village. Daru does not do so, but,rather, after sleeping under the same roof and providing him with food, water and money,gives the man a choice: he can return to his tribe, or turn himself in. As Daru leaves thecrossroads, he sees ‘with heavy heart… the Arab walking slowly on the road toprison’ (ibid., p. 81).

Camus does not give any explanation for Daru’s act, which is the reverse of Meursault’s, for ‘no one in this desert, neither he nor his guest, mattered’ (ibid., p. 74). Daru has no particularly warm feelings towards his guest; occasionally he even feels ‘a sudden wrath against the man’ (ibid., p. 70). Nor is he a chauvinist who hates all Arabs.His is simply a unique act of absurd liberation, one that is completely unjustified, as is themurder in The Outsider. Despite the lack of any reasonable justification, the reader feelsthat Daru performed a highly moral act. Outside the framework of any ethical code ortranscendent valuesystem we recognize this as a pure expression of authentic humanmorality. The absurd circle that started with the absurd crime of the outsider is closed bythis humane but nonetheless absurd act.

One sentence summarizes Daru’s feelings about the way he ought to act: ‘That man’s stupid crime revolted him, but to hand him over was contrary to honour’ (ibid., p. 79). Honour and dignity are values so deeply rooted in Daru that he disobeys ‘the order’ to uphold them. Daru does not need the categorical imperative—though Kant himself would not have acted as Daru did, as his own example of the refugeseeker shows. In thisexample, pursuers ask a man who has sheltered an escapee if the escapee is in his house,putting him in an impossible bind. He must either lie to them or hand the escapee over tohis pursuers: neither act can be universalized. Nor does Daru need Sartre’s version of Kant’s objective morality of freedom as presented in Existentialism and Humanism. Daru refused to obey, since no order is more valid than the ideology, ethic or regime that issuesit. In a world where no historical rebellions are ‘right’ or authentic, according to the analysis in The Rebel, only the natural feelings of honour, human respect and dignity,which are prior and preferable to any ideology, remain.

Can we, however, bring the following counter-example to discredit Camus’s conclusion? Suppose a war-criminal such as Eichmann happened to fall into Daru’s custody: would it then also be ‘right’ to allow him to choose his way freely? If the answeris, even here, affirmative, where would we draw the line between ‘natural’ humanism and the barriers that even a humane culture must erect to defend itself against enemies whothreaten to destroy it for the sake of some ideology?

There are, however, several hints that Camus is not thinking of sanctioning the Christian ethic of offering one’s neck to the hangman. He himself fought to expel the Nazis from France. Referring to this chapter of his life, he writes in ‘Letters to a German Friend’ that he fought ‘to save the idea of man’. The salient factor seems to be Daru’s announcement to the gendarme that he ‘won’t hand him over. Fight, yes, if I have to. Butnot that’ (Guest, p. 72). For the sake of defending cultural and social institutions, Daru iswilling to fight. But when there is no imminent danger to our humanity, there is nojustification for killing or turning in others.

The last pages of the story throw the contrast between Camus’s atheism, and Kierkegaard’s faith as portrayed in Fear and Trembling, into sharp relief. As Abraham led Isaac to Mount Moriah, so Daru leads the Arab. Here, however, no pillar of fire or


Kantian ethics is present to provide guidance, just the desert sand and an immanentvacuum. Yet the desert is permeated by a deep sense of honour and respect for our imageof man. While standing ‘at the foot of the height’ (ibid., p. 80) Daru listens to the authentic voice of his conscience admonishing him not to take orders from those whopossess no consummately valid authority.

Alongside the implicit critique of Kierkegaard we can sense a distinctly Nietzscheanidea that nicely closes the circle of heroes of authenticity we have been studying. I referto Zarathustra’s appeal to his pupils: to be loyal to his teaching and way of life they mustleave him and ‘go their own ways’. When Daru brings the Arab to the crossroads where he must choose, the Arab waits for Daru’s instructions. He seeks some kind of orderwhich will relieve him of the burden of choosing his own life. Following Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, Camus indicates that if the student does not leave his master, the master mustleave the student to choose alone. He indicates to the baffled Arab that he can choose either prison or liberty but he must choose of his own free will and assume responsibilityfor his own life.

This is the perspective from which we must understand the role of those whose teachings on authenticity we have examined throughout this book: like Daru, they seek tolead their readers to that crossroads where they must choose either to create theirauthentic selves or lose them.

Sartre puts the dilemma to a student as follows: ‘You are free, therefore choose—that is to say, invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do: nosigns are vouchsafed in this world’ (EH, p. 38). Yet essentially, in this post-war lecture, Sartre returns to the Kantian paradigm of objective freedom.

The basic question, then, is whether this regression from the initial intuitions of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche regarding authenticity is inevitable if we are to makeauthenticity viable today. Is the flight from the earlier individualistic creative model ofauthenticity to some theory of human nature or some congenial ethos absolutelynecessary? Is authenticity a social value that can in fact be implemented by postmodernhumanity?

Notes

1 One of few books written on Camus in English claims that ‘Camus can hardly be reckoned a philosopher at all’ (C.C.O’Brien, Camus (Glasgow: Fontana, 1970), p. 60). Indeed, a Britishcommentator who in 1954 predicted that, owing to the English ‘empirical tradition’ and dislike of ‘the passion for morality’, Camus would be considered exotic by the British, hasbeen proved correct: see S.B.John, ‘Albert Camus: A British View’, in Camus: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. G.Brée (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 85. To be fair, however, it should be noted that today even the French are less disposed to consider Camus aphilosopher, and the popularity he once enjoyed in France has almost completely fallen off.

2 See the interview given by Camus to Les Nouvelles Littéraires on 15 November 1945, republished in the Oeuvres completes d’Albert Camus (Paris: Gallimard 1965), vol. II, pp.


1424–5. An English translation appears in A.Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays, ed. P.Thody, trans.E. C.Kennedy (New York: Vintage, 1970) (henceforth LACE), pp. 345–8.

3 Immanence is already a theme in Camus’s earliest writings (e.g. ‘Nuptials’ from 1938, also found in LACE, p. 76). In another story, he writes: ‘Between this sky and the faces turned toward it there is nothing on which to hang a mythology, a literature, an ethic, or a religion…no superhuman happiness, no eternity outside the curve of the days’ (LACE, p. 90).

4 At nineteen Camus wrote ‘Essay on Music’, in which he examines the aesthetic import ofideas found in Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. Camus remarks there that he is dedicatingmore space to Nietzsche than to Schopenhauer ‘because this poet philosopher’s strange personality is too magnetic not to deserve first rank’ (Youthful Writings (Cahiers II), trans. E.C.Kennedy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), p. 106; cf. p. 102). Camus identifies withNietzsche’s ‘optimism based upon the rapture of suffering’ and with his ‘immense pride’ (ibid., p. 110). Another youthful work, ‘Intuitions’ (ibid., pp. 123–34), which was ‘born of great lassitude’, bears a definite Nietzschean stamp and is actually a paraphrase of chapter two of the fourth part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where ‘the proclaimer of the great weariness’ (Z, p. 353) is introduced.

5 The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. J.O’Brien (London: Hamish Hamilton), (henceforth MS), p. 45. 6 ‘Return to Tipasa’, ibid., p. 156. 7 ‘The feeling of the absurd is not…the notion of the absurd’ (ibid., p. 29). Sartre also

understood this, as is clear from the following remarks: ‘The Myth of Sisyphus might be said to aim at giving us this idea [of the absurd], and The Outsider at giving us the feeling…. The Outsider, the first to appear, plunges us without comment into the “climate” of the absurd; the essay then comes and illumines the landscape’ (‘Camus’s The Outsider’, in Jean-Paul Sartre, Literary and Philosophical Essays, trans. A.Michelson (New York: Criterion, 1955),p. 32).

8 ‘La Nausée by Jean-Paul Sartre’, in Albert Camus, Selected Essays and Notebooks, ed. and trans. P.Thody (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), p. 167.

9 See D. Sprintzen, Camus: A Critical Examination, (Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple UniversityPress, 1988), p. viii.

10 MS, p. 29. It is no coincidence that Camus refers to Husseri’s descriptive method several times. However, unlike Heidegger and Sartre, he did not attempt to ensure that his intuitionswere grounded in a valid system and was satisfied to employ only the explicatory-descriptive side of phenomenology.

11 See F.A.Olafson’s critical review of The Myth of Sisyphus, in Philosophical Review, 66 (1957), 104–7; and cf. his Principles and Persons (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1967), p. 243.

12 ‘For us, Pascal is a great philosopher’ (LACE, p. 234). In another essay Camus says that ‘we have to choose between miracles and absurdity: there is no middle way. We know the choicePascal made’ (ibid., p. 235; cf. p. 363). Elsewhere he says: ‘it’s better to bet on this life than on the next’ (A Happy Death, trans. R.Howard (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) (henceforthHD), p. 36).

13 See Jacob Golomb, Nietzsche’s Enticing Psychology of Power (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1989), pp. 269–75.

14 E.g. J.Cruickshank, Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 151; and cf. R.Solomon, who quotes other interpreters to this effect, in‘Camus’s L’Etranger and the Truth’, in his From Hegel to Existentialism (London: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 246–60.

15 ‘Irony’ in L’Envers et l’endroit (LACE, pp. 19–29).


16 The Outsider, trans. S.Gilbert (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), p. 101. 17 See, e.g., the penultimate sentence of ‘Irony’: ‘Death for us all, but his own death to

each’ (LACE, p. 29). 18 See ibid., pp. 29, 59–60, 75. One of the few instances in which Camus uses the term

‘authenticity’ explicitly is a reference to ‘[an] authentic, a real light, an afternoon light,signifying life, the sort of light that makes one aware of living’ (ibid., p. 46).

19 Caligula and Other Plays, trans. S.Gilbert (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), p. 64. 20 J.Cruickshank’s ‘Introduction’ to Caligula, pp. 15–16. 21 This ironic posture is also central in Camus’s last novel, The Fall, where the ‘honest’ ex-

judge Jean-Baptiste Clamence feels alienated from the ethic of honesty. 22 In Cruickshank’s ‘Introduction’ to Caligula, p. 22. 23 The Rebel: A Essay on Man in Revolt, trans. A.Bower (New York: Vintage, 1956)

(henceforth Rebel), p. 64. 24 ‘Letters to a German Friend’ (hereafter LGF), in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, trans.

J.O’Brien (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp. 27–8. 25 The Plague, trans. S.Gilbert (New York: Random House, 1948), pp. 79, 117. 26 In Exile and the Kingdom, trans. J.O’Brien (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), pp. 65–82.


Conclusion: Authenticity and Ethics

Most philosophical treatises end by reviewing their main arguments to show how theyconclusively support certain definite ‘objective’ theses. This procedure, however, seemsinappropriate here, given that the treatments of authenticity we have considered areunusually ‘unscientific’ (to use Kierkegaard’s term), open-ended and tentative. Indeed, the very nature of the accounts we have examined precludes any attempt to formulate aconclusive summary.

To conclude is to reach an end together, but the authentic posture, as understood by the philosophers of authenticity, forbids me from presuming to conclude for you or for us. Each individual has to come to her own conclusions about authenticity. In fact,encouraging you to ponder this existential issue and to entice you into drawing your ownconclusions is a central objective of this book. As Nietzsche advises us throughZarathustra, ‘if you would go high, use your own legs’.

‘Entice’ comes from enticier, literally, to set on fire. I have sought, therefore, to inspire readers seriously to experiment with their lives and values, previously taken for granted.A committed search for authenticity is akin to playing with fire—the seeker may be purged and reemerge as a genuine individual, but he may also be burned. If the attempt tobecome authentic does not destroy one, it can make one more genuine.

The existential question today is not whether to be or not to be, but how one can become what one truly is. Two kinds of attempt have been made to answer this question.The negative approach portrays the different routes people have taken to become whatthey are not; the opposite strategy is to examine literary portraits of individuals whoachieve authenticity. Such concrete examples can serve as an inspiration, but cannotfunction as prescriptions, since there is no single exclusively valid path to authenticity;nor can there be.

From the historical perspective, however, the intuitive and individual routes to authenticity seem to be more viable and productive than the ontological-phenomenological approaches. Yet, at the same time, attaining authenticity is by no means a solitary pursuit. Indeed, what seems incontrovertible is that authenticity cannotbe achieved outside a social context. The recurrent calls to strive for authenticity summonus not to embrace solipsism or nihilism, but, rather, to live a committed and active life—not in a social void or underground, but within a community.

Authenticity calls for an ongoing life of significant actions. It is actions that shape ourauthenticity. The thinkers we have looked at preferred action, or Heideggerian ‘care’, to reflection (which, Kierkegaard claims, ‘freezes action’) and knowledge (which ‘kills


action’ according to Nietzsche). But meaningful activity is only possible in the context of intersubjective interaction, namely, within society.

Most accounts of authenticity are modelled on the aesthetic ideal of creativity:spontaneous creation of one’s self and life. Yet no creativity is possible without the social and cultural context that provides the raw material one uses—the conventions, ideas and institutions against which one must struggle to fashion one’s authentic self. Society provides the ethical norms and potential sources of self-identity that must freely and consciously be overcome, changed or assimilated into one’s life if one is to become what one wants to be.

Authenticity, we saw, is best forged and revealed in ‘boundary’ or extreme existential situations. Yet such circumstances presuppose a social context. Even when one confrontsdisasters caused by nature, as, for example, Dr Rieux does in Camus’s The Plague, these natural catastrophes require human presence and human struggle to generate existentialdilemmas. On an isolated island one is measured solely according to physical criteria ofsurvival; it would be pointless to speak of authenticity in such a situation. Authenticitydoes not refer to sheer factual life but to the life worth living. Even Kierkegaard, whotakes the most individualistic approach to authenticity, gives, as an example of extremecircumstances which constitute an ultimate test of faith out of which authenticity can beforged, the case of Abraham’s being required to sacrifice his son Isaac. Jesus too needed others—those who built the cross, and those who crucified him.

The literature on authenticity abounds in descriptions of conflicts between individuals acting on different ethical maxims. These conflicts highlight the need for resolute andauthentic decisions and spontaneous actions. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard argue that oneknows what one is only after realizing what one is not. Hence, it is essential for the individual to encounter and experiment with the various life-styles, patterns and belief-systems that arise in human society, history and ethics. Thus not only is there notheoretical incompatibility between the notions of authenticity and society; the socialcontext is an indispensable condition of authenticity.

But can authenticity, thus understood, ever be implemented? Here too we have lookedat some convincing arguments to the effect that authenticity is highly problematic at best.

The first argument has to do with the subjective nature of authenticity. If authenticity is to be embraced, it must first be desired. But it is claimed that all human values areultimately unjustifiable, authenticity among them. There is no reason to suppose that it isany better or any more valuable to be authentic than to act inauthentically. A value thatcannot be grounded and implemented by conventional (i.e. rational) means of persuasionis, by definition, not objective and therefore is devoid of ethical appeal.

The thinkers on authenticity accepted this and held that since an ethic of authenticity cannot be constructed a priori—none ever wrote a treatise on ethics, though some (Sartre, for example) promised to do so—authenticity would be manifested by willingness toembrace its subjective pathos without the crutch of a rigorous ethical code. Indeed, as auniquely personal pathos, authenticity cannot even be argued for. Hence, its proponentslack any systematic means of demonstrating its value and must resort to indirect, mainlyliterary, means to induce us to become authentic. Irony is often employed to this effect.However, while irony, positive as it may be, can indeed induce subjective pathos, itcannot establish a radically new ethic. The various enticing tactics, however effective in

Conclusion: Authenticity and Ethics 144

individual cases, clearly do not suffice for widespread dissemination of authenticity andits acceptance by society as a whole. Most people, of course, do not read the ‘enticing’ literature; those who do and are indeed enticed by it will be unable to persuade others tofollow.

Suppose we assume that authenticity can be implemented in society. This endows it with objective import. But this objective meaning undermines its standing as anindividual pathos rather than a universal ethic. If authenticity succeeds in becoming anobjective value, the revolt against the ‘spirit of seriousness’ and pompous sincerity and honesty collapses. Once it becomes an established ethic, in what way is it superior to theethic it seeks to replace? We find ourselves where we started—with a regulative ideal comparable to those offered by Kant and Hegel! One might argue that this actually doesnot close the whole issue; that, on the contrary, the openness which characterizes theideal of authenticity enables it to turn on itself in revolt.

If, on the other hand, the notion of authentic life as a personal pathos has value only within the narrow subjective realm of self-reference, why bother about whether others can be enticed into accepting it? Authenticity as a value thus seems incompatible with themotivations that inspire us to struggle to attain it.

Another argument against the viability of authenticity revolves around the problem ofrecognition. Since the philosophers of authenticity do not provide any criteria, howevervague or subjective, for identifying instances of authenticity, for authoritatively decidingthat x is authentic and y is not, how can authenticity function as an explicit value at all?

Existentially, too, the question remains open, and we are left to fulfil the expectations of existing ethical codes by conforming with their values while experiencing disgust thatwe are doing so. The struggle to find acceptance and security, along with our distaste forour need to do so, has a devastating effect on the desire freely to create one’s authenticity.

The issue of authenticity as an ethical value is far from being adequately clarified or conclusively settled, and most of the thinkers on authenticity remain ambivalent about it.Kierkegard requires some aspects of traditional Rationalism to cope with it, while thephenomenological ontologies of authenticity have recourse to an element quiteincompatible with their subject-matter and their self-proclaimed break with philosophical tradition. Camus ends up speaking of the universal human essence, and Nietzsche voiceshis ambivalence by sending forth Zarathustra from the cave of subjectivity and personalpathos to an undisclosed destination. To society? To an objective ethic? It remainsnotably unclear. All the heroes of authenticity surveyed (including Kierkegaard’s Abraham) were in fact fictional figures who remained in the twilight zone betweenobjective ethic and subjective pathos.

In his study of authenticity, Charles Taylor warns against an unrestrained, egocentric individualism. His sympathetic attitude to the ideal of authenticity as countering the‘malaises of modernity’1 is remarkable evidence that the issue is far from having beenclosed by Camus, or, for that matter, by the present study, which stresses the aestheticmodel of authenticity.2

There is today a grave danger that we are facing the death of authenticity. Poststructuralist thought and the other currently fashionable streams of what is vaguely called ‘postmodernism’ attempt to dissolve the subjective pathos of authenticity whichlies at the heart of existentialist concern. This study should be seen as an attempt to


redress the postmodernistic devaluation of the authentic self by embarking on historicalreconstruction.

Yet one thing is certain: the fact that this ideal demands serious consideration hasalready made many in this society more authentic. The clamour for authenticity on thepart of prominent philosophers and writers of the last two centuries, and the thirst ofreaders for its pathos, surely indicate that in this ideal we have much more than empty‘jargon’, as Adorno argued.3 Despite the ratiocinations of Adorno and his followers, I firmly believe that the deepest longings and urges of individuals—to create their own individuality and remain what they are—cannot be suppressed.

As there is no proof of the impossibility of authenticity, the search for it will continue.And the impact of this search for authenticity is itself significant, despite the ontologicalor ethical difficulties involved. The search may not authenticate us, but it does make ushuman (as do attempts to establish an equal and just society). The very wish to livegenuinely, the very attempt to become authentic, expresses courageous determination notto despair or to yield to the powerful processes of levelling, objectification anddepersonalization. To be human is to search for one’s true self and to yearn for authentic relations with others. While it is hard, almost impossible, to attain public authenticitywithin the prevailing social ethic, with its instrumental personal and economic relations,it is certainly feasible to attempt to do so—to take responsibility for one’s actions and to foster true concern for others. Though the philosophers of authenticity had doubts aboutour ability to become authentic, they may well have been willing to settle for less—they may have simply hoped to arouse our thirst for our genuine selves and to encourage us todare to satisfy it. Merely attempting to be what we are individualizes us from theanonymous inauthentic mass of everydayness that engulfs us. To use Heidegger’s expression, we will fail ‘proximally and for the most part’, but we should still try, for in trying we are already succeeding.

Let me end with a personal vision expressed in terms of a musical analogy. I envisage a society of authentic individuals as analogous to an orchestra without a conductor, whereeach individual plays her own composition. Sometimes one member of the ensemble willbe in tune with the others, but not always. There is only one proviso: no one composition can overcome the others, and no player can suppress another’s self-expression. From the outside, the music produced by these individuals sounds like sheer cacophony, but for theparticipants each of their pieces has meaning, while the music played by the othersfunctions as the inevitable background against which they struggle to perfect theiroriginal melodies.

How can such a scenario ever be realized? In former times, it was thought possibleonly if secured by Providence or the state. Could it be, however, that today we are matureenough to undertake this responsibility ourselves? That is, to work out arrangementsallowing for self-creation and self-expression without impeding these processes inothers? If not today, then perhaps this will someday be possible; in which case, inaddition to the rarely implemented categorical imperative, a new imperative willemerge—the imperative to follow the regulative ideal of creating one’s authentic self.

Finally, let us recall Kierkegaard’s historical description of the emergence of theauthentic ideal: ‘With every turning point in history there are two movements to beobserved. On the one hand, the new shall come forth; on the other, the old must be

Conclusion: Authenticity and Ethics 146

displaced.’4 At these turningpoints we will encounter the authentic individual. Just as thedecline of the ethic of objectivity set in motion the appeal for authenticity, so the declineof the ethic of subjectivity in the postmodern era, and the suppression of individualityencouraged by the mass media and multinational markets, will invigorate the quest forauthenticity as a personal, corrective ideal if not an objectively viable norm. Only thereturn to our authentic pathos can prevent the betrayal of what is dearest to each of us:our own selfhood.

Notes

1 To wit, lack of ‘a higher purpose, of something worth dying for’, ‘lack of passion’, ‘the primacy of instrumental reason’ and ‘loss of freedom’ (Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 2–10.

2 Another interpretation of authenticity stresses its origins in auctoritas, inherent authority. Recent American versions of existentialism, particularly those of David Carr, RobertSolomon, Merold Westphal and Bruce Wilshire, tend to adopt this interpretation: seeQ.Smith, ‘Bruce Wilshire and the Dilemma of Nontheistic Existentialism’, Philosophy Today, 33 (1989), 358–73.

3 T.W.Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, trans. K.Tarnowski and F.Will (London: Routledge& Kegan Paul, 1973).

4 The Concept of Irony, pp. 277–8.


Bibliography

A General surveys: authenticity and ethics

Adorno, T., The Jargon of Authenticity, trans. K.Tarnowski and F.Will, London:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.

Berman, M., The Politics of Authenticity, New York: Atheneum, 1970. Charmé, S.Z., Vulgarity and Authenticity, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,

1991. Cooper, D.E., Existentialism: A Reconstruction, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Grene, M., ‘Authenticity: An Existential Virtue’, Ethics 62 (1952): 266–74. Llewelyn, J., ‘Value, Authenticity and the Death of God’, in G.H.R.Parkinson (ed.), An

Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London: Routledge, 1988, pp. 641–64. MacIntyre, A., After Virtue, London: Duckworth, 1981. Macquarrie, J., Existentialism, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. Olson, R.G., An Introduction to Existentialism, New York: Dover, 1962. Olafson, F.A., Principles and Persons: An Ethical Interpretation of Existentialism,

Baltimore, Md: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967. Taylor, C., The Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1991. —— ‘Responsibility for Self’, in G.Watson (ed.), Free Will, London: Oxford University

Press, 1982, pp. 111–26. Trilling, L., ‘Authenticity and the Modern Unconscious’, Commentary, Sept. 1971, pp.

39–50. Wahl, J., Philosophies of Existence, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969. Warnock, M., Existentialist Ethics, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1967. Wild, J., ‘Authentic Existence: A New Approach to “Value Theory”’, Ethics 75

(1965):227–39. Williams, B., Problems of the Self, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

B Authenticity, sincerity and honesty

Hampshire, S., ‘Sincerity and Single-Mindedness’, in his Freedom of Mind, Oxford:

Bibliography 148

Clarendon Press, 1972, pp. 232–56. Olson, R.G., ‘Sincerity and the Moral Life’, Ethics 68 (1957/8): 260–80. Trilling, L., Sincerity and Authenticity, London: Oxford University Press, 1972. Wood, D., ‘Honesty’, in A. Montefiore (ed.), Philosophy and Personal Relations,

London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, pp. 191–223.

C Authenticity and literature

Booth, W.C, A Rhetoric of Irony, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Cohn, D., Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction,

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978. Dolezel, L., ‘Truth and Authenticity in Narrative’, Poetics Today 1 (1980): 7–25. Jaspers, K., Philosophy, trans. E.B.Ashton, Chicago and London: University of Chicago

Press, 1969–71, Vol. II. Knee, P, ‘Ironic et mauvaise foi’, Philosophiques 11 (1984): 71–90. Rimmon-Kenan, S., Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, London: Methuen, 1983. Rorty, R., Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1989.

D Søren Kierkegaard

Collins, J., The Mind of Kierkegaard, London: Secker & Warburg, 1954. Golomb, J., ‘Kierkegaard’s Ironic Ladder to Authentic Faith’, International Journal for

Philosophy of Religion 32 (1991): 65–81. Taylor, M.C., Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Authorship, Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1975. Wahl, J., Études Kierkegaardiennes, Paris: Aubier, 1938.

E Friedrich Nietzsche

Golomb, J., ‘Nietzsche on Authenticity’, Philosophy Today 34 (1990): 243–58. ——Nietzsche’s Enticing Psychology of Power, Ames: Iowa State University Press,

1989. Kaufmann, K., Nietzsche, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968. Nehamas, A., Nietzsche: Life as Literature, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

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F Martin Heidegger

Ciaffa, J.A., Towards an Understanding of Heidegger’s Conception of the Inter-relation between Authentic and Inauthentic Existence’, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 18 (1987): 49–59.

Farwell, P., ‘Can Heidegger’s Craftsman be Authentic?’, International Philosophical Quarterly 29 (1989): 77–90.

Guignon, C.B., ‘Heidegger’s “Authenticity” Revisited’, Review of Metaphysics 38 (1984):321–39.

Harries, K., ‘Heidegger as a Political Thinker’, in M.Murray (ed.), Heidegger and Modern Philosophy, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1978.

Levinas, E., Ethics and Infinity, trans. R.A.Cohen, Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 1985.

Richardson, J., Existential Epistemology, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Stambaugh, J., ‘An Inquiry into Authenticity and Inauthenticity in Being and Time’, in

J.Sallis (ed.), Radical Phenomenology: Essays in Honor of Martin Heidegger, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1978.

Waterhouse, R., “The Vacuity of Heidegger’s Authenticity’, in his A Heidegger Critique, Brighton: Harvester, 1981, pp. 179–92.

Zimmerman, M., Eclipse of the Self: The Development of Heidegger’s Concept of Authenticity, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981.

G Jean-Paul Sartre

Anderson, T.C., ‘Is a Sartrean Ethics Possible?’, Philosophy Today 14 (1970): 116–40. —— The Foundation and Structure of Sartrean Ethics, Lawrence: Regent’s Press of

Kansas , 1979. —— Sartre’s Two Ethics: From Authenticity to Integral Humanity, Chicago: Open

Court, 1993. Barnes, H., An Existentialist Ethics, New York: Knopf, 1967. Bell, L.A., Sartre’s Ethics of Authenticity, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press,

1989. Brinker, M. ‘A Double Clearing of the Fog: Sartre’s “The Childhood of a Leader” and its

Relation to His Philosophy’, in L.Toker (ed.), Commitment in Reflection, New York: Garland, 1994, pp. 101–19.

Catalano, J., ‘Authenticity: A Sartrean Perspective’, Philosophical Forum 22 (1990): 99–

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119. Fell, P.J., Heidegger and Sartre, New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. Frondizi, R., ‘Sartre’s Early Ethics: A Critique’, in P.A.Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of

Jean-Paul Sartre, La Salle, III.: Open Court, 1981, pp. 371–91. Glynn, S. (ed.), Sartre: An Investigation of Some Major Themes, Aldershot: Avebury,

1987. Gorz, A., ‘Jean-Paul Sartre: From Consciousness to Praxis’, Philosophy Today 19 (1975):

287–92. Jeanson, F., Sartre and the Problem of Morality, trans. R.V.Stone, Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1980. Lauder, R., ‘Choose Freedom! Sartre’s Search for Authenticity’, New Catholic World

216 (1973): 269–72. Manser, A., ‘A New Look at Bad Faith’, in S.Glynn (ed.), Sartre: An Investigation of

Some Major Themes, Aldershot: Avebury, 1987, pp. 55–70. Santoni, R.E., ‘Morality, Authenticity and God’, Philosophy Today 31 (1987): 242–52. Smith, W., ‘Authenticity in Sartre’s Early Work’, Southwest Philosophical Studies 11

(1989): 65–72. Smoot, W., ‘The Concept of Authenticity in Sartre’, Man and World 7 (1974): 135–48. Stone, R.V., ‘Sartre on Bad Faith and Authenticity’, in P.A.Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy

of Jean-Paul Sartre, La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1981, pp. 246–56. Warnock, M., The Philosophy of Sartre, London: Hutchinson University Library, 1965.

H Albert Camus

Brée, G. (ed.), Camus: A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962.

Cruickshank, J., Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt, London: Oxford University Press, 1959.

Doubrovsky, S., ‘The Ethics of Albert Camus’, in B.L.Knapp (ed.), Critical Essays on Albert Camus, Boston, Mass.: G.K.Hall & Co., 1988, pp. 151–64.

Henry, P., ‘“The Myth of Sisyphus” and “The Stranger” of Albert Camus’, Philosophy Today 19 (1975): 358–68.

Schofer, P., ‘The Rhetoric of the Text: Causality, Metaphor and Irony’, in A. King (ed), Camus’s ‘L’Etranger’: Fifty Years On, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992, pp. 139–51.

Solomon, R.C., ‘Camus’s L’Etranger and the Truth’, in his From Hegel to Existentialism, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 246–60.

Sprintzen, D., Camus: A Critical Examination, Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple UniversityPress, 1988.

Bibliography 151

Index

Abraham and Isaac 1, 3, 17, 44–47, 57, 124, 137, 143, 144, 148, 150 absurd/absurdity 124, 126–132, 134, 138, 141 –142 acts/actions 18–19, 28, 103–104, 111, 148;

gratuitous 151, 183; intentional 133–5, 146; of lucidity 168; political action 128, 136, 140, 155, 160

Adorno, Theodor 150 aesthetic model of authenticity 148;

in Camus 191, 203; Heidegger and 120; Nietzsche and 69, 70–1; in Sartre 131, 140, 145–6, 151, 156–7, 162

alienation: Nietzsche and 68; Sartre and 161; self-alienation, Hegel and 9

amor fati: Camus and 193; Nietzsche and 145, 174

Angst 77, 105, 107 anguish:

Sartre and 152 anti-hero 2, 106, 107,

see also heroes of authenticity anxiety 75, 77–78, 85;

about death 109–10 authentic:

definition 5 authentic hero see heroes of authenticity authenticity:

defining 7; honesty and sincerity and 8–10; pathos of 19, 20; use of term 7

bad faith (mauvaise foi) 6, 95, 102, 118;

bourgeois ethics and 144; epistemological features of consciousness and 135, 137;

Index 152

freedom and 152–3, 160; of Heidegger 149; in-itself/for-itself and 155; of Lucien 146, 147–8; mechanisms impelling towards 130; relating to others as means 159; in Sartre 128; seductive charm of 131; sincerity and 153–4; of the ‘they’ 144

Barth, John 153 Being 22, 66, 68, 69, 77;

Dasein see Dasein; death and see death; essence of 95; future 115; history of philosophy and 91; ‘mineness’ of 97, 98; past and history 114–17; a priori ontological structure of 90; problem of implementation 90; quest for meaning of 89, 90

Being-alongside-each-other 77 ‘being-beside’ 72 Being-for-itself (être-pour-soi) 105, 112, 118 being-for-itself-in-itself 111, 113, 114 Being-guilty 82, 84 Being-in-itself (être-en-soi) 105, 118 Being-in-the-world 72–74, 84;

community 100, 102; death and 105; homecoming and 99; Sartre and 133; as tempting (versucherisch) 102

Being-in-the-world-with-one-another 76 Being-towards-death 67, 78–82, 86, 106, 135;

future 118; individualization 114; tranquillization 108, see also death

‘being-with’ 72, 79 Being-with-one-another 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 91;

authentic care 100; death and 105; mature interaction 100, see also community

Bentham, Jeremy 141 biographies 16–17;

Index 153

Nietzsche and 21; Sartre and 22, 157–60

biological model of authenticity: in Camus 191; in Heidegger 118–20; in Nietzsche 69–70; in Rousseau 191

Booth, Wayne 20 Bretall, Robert 49n

Camus, Albert 6, 13, 16, 66, 127, 128, 129, 135;

the absurd/absurdity 169, 171–80, 182, 187, 191–3; acceptance of immanence 185–6; act of lucidity 168; aesthetic model of authenticity 191, 203; amor fati 193; art of living 170; biological model of authenticity 191; Caligula 186–9, 191, 192; contingency and immanence 143; crime 180; crimes of logic 193; death of God 10; enticement 170, 187, 193–4; ethics 179; extreme situations 22; historical rebellion 189; honour 195–6; human solidarity 191; humanism 187–8, 191; humanitarianism 191; integrity 179; intentionality 178–9; irony 181; literary techniques 18, 193–4; metaphor, use of 4, 169, 186; metaphysical rebellion 189; murder 173, 183, 193; Nazism 189–90; negative enticement 178; Nietzsche and 168–9, 192, 193–4; nihilism see nihilism; objectivist-essentialist paradigm 191; The Outsider/Meursault 2, 22, 25, 179, 180–6, 191, 195; The Plague/Dr Rieux 22, 25, 194, 201; plays 22; rebellion 189–94; Sartre and 184–5;

Index 154

sense of honour 195–6; sincerity and honesty 181–2, 185; strict immanence 168; suicide 172, 175–7; sun, metaphor of 4, 186; ‘The Guest’ 195–7; totalitarian ideologies 193

care (Sorge) 88, 148 Carr, David 151n ‘The Childhood of a Leader’ /Lucien 107 –109 coherence, ideal of 9 Cohn, D. 23n Collins, J. 49n community 148;

Being-in-the-world 100, 102; of Dasein 98, 116, 123; Heidegger and 98, 100, 102, 116, 123; Nietzsche and 79, see also Being-with-one-another

congruence: sincerity and 9, 12–13

Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness 23, 24

conscience: Heidegger and 110–14, 121, 137

consciousness: absolute 136; being-for-itself-in-itself 151, 154, 155; être-poursoi (Being-for-itself) 142; Hegel and 15; intentionality and 132–4, 135, 146, 154, 157; intuition 132; non-egological intentional theory of 132; purification of 132, 133; reflected 134–6; reflecting 134; Sartre and 132–46, 149–56, 158; self-creation see self-creation; self-generated 143; self-sufficient 143; spontaneity 132, 136; transparency 138

contingency 105 –106 crime:

Camus and 180 Cruickshank, J. 146n cynicism 22–22;

nihilistic 29;

Index 155

passivity and 30

Dasein 66, 68, 69, 70–78; Angst 103, 104, 143, 145; anxiety 101, 103–5, 109; Being see Being; Being-in-the-world see Being-in-the-world; call to authenticity 111–12; community of 98, 116, 123; comparison with other selves 102–3; death and 109, 116; everydayness and 115, 123; falling (Verfallen) of 93, 99, 101, 102, 111–12; free choice 96; future and 115; guilt and 111–14; heimlich 103; historicality 116, 121; history 114–17, 143; ‘idle talk’ 121; inauthenticity and 122–3; the inessential and 95; ‘ownness’/ ‘mineness’ 96, 97, 100, 112, 121; past and history 114–17; ‘present-to-hand’ 94, 100, 101, 109, 117; a priori ontological structure in 96; public self-interpretation 102; ‘readiness-to-hand’ 100, 109, 117; Sartre on 138; seduction of 94, 102, 108, 119; self-abandonment 102; social existence of 102; submission/surrender of 98, 99; temptation (Versuchung) 101–2

de Beauvoir, Simone 23n, 115 death:

anxiety about 109–10; and Dasein 109, 116; as extreme situation 25; freedom towards 106, 109; of God see death of God; Heidegger and 25, 93, 98, 104, 105–10, 116; individualization and 114; ownness and 110; resoluteness in face of 114; Sartre and 144; self-concealments and 114, see also Being-towards-death

Index 156

death of God 2, 10; Camus and 10; Nietzsche and 3, 10, 13, 68, 73; Sartre and 10

Descartes, René 51; Cartesian doubt 192; method 191

despair: Kierkegaard and 56, 58

detachment 22 Diderot, Denis 10 –12 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 3 Dru, A. 25, 38, 48n

ego:

empirical 10; transcendental see transcendental ego

emotions: function of 139; Heidegger on moods 115, 143; Hume on 11; intentionality and 138; love, Kierkegaard and 62; magic 139, 140; as play-acting 139; Sartre on 131, 137–40

empirical ego 8 engagement 7, 114 enlightenment 2 Enright, D.J. 24n enticement 22, 159;

Camus and 170, 178, 187, 193–4; Heidegger and 91, 92, 94; irony and 29, 48, 50, 202; Kant and 90; Kierkegaard and 34, 40, 42, 43, 44, 48, 50, 55; literary 30; negative 178; Nietzsche and 73, 74, 77, 84, 85; positive 73

ethics 148–152; Camus on 179; Heidegger and 90, 113; Kantian 41, 55; Kierkegaard and 56, 59, 62, 183; ought/is 13, 15, 27; ‘oughts’ 13

evocation:

Index 157

Hegel and 92; Kierkegaard and 92

existential psychoanalysis 97, 107, 115 existentialism 9;

coherence 12; individuum 12

existentialist revolt 6, 9 extreme situations:

in Camus 22; in Conrad 23, 24; death 25; in Kierkegaard 26; in literature 22–6; in Nietzsche 23–4; in Sartre 22, 24

faith:

Kierkegaard and 35, 40, 41, 49, 51, 54, 55, 59, 61, 63, 88, 139, 179 Fenger, H. 47n Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 12n Flaubert, Gustave 115, 116 freedom towards death 79, 81 Freud, Sigmund 18, 60;

guilt and 113; unconscious 139, see also psychoanalysis

Gallagher, M.P. 49n Gardiner, P. 49n genealogy 9;

Nietzsche and 78–9, 81 Genet, Jean 97, 116, 117 Gide, André:

acte gratuit 183 God:

becoming 10, 149, 151, 153, 154, 163; death of see death of God; Heidegger and 115, 117; Kierkegaard and 54, 63, 117; Nietzsche and 3, 10, 68, 73; Sartre and 149, 151, 153, 154, 163

Golomb, Jacob 64n, 65n, 93n, 146n Grene, M. 93n, 93n Grimault, M. 47n Guignon, C.B. 93n guilt:

Being-guilty 111, 113; and Dasein 111–14;

Index 158

Freud and 113; Heidegger and 110–14; Nietzsche and 113

Harries, K. 69 Hegel, G.W.F. 10, 20, 25, 31, 45;

absolute rationality 9; Absolute Spirit 36, 52; consciousness 15; evocation 92; freedom 9, 52; the ‘honest individual’ 9, 10; Phenomenology of Spirit 9; Reason 38, 39, 41, 52; self-alienation 9; Sittlichkeit 9, 55; Spirit 9

Hegelianism 44; dominance of 46; objectivity 41, 44; sincerity and honesty 55

Heidegger, Martin 14, 62, 66–94, 98, 146n, 150; ‘active ecstasis’ 115; Angst 103, 104, 143, 145; anticipation (Vorlaufen) 118; anxiety 101, 103–5, 109, 115; artistic-creative model of authenticity 120; Being see Being; Being-alongside-each-other 103; ‘being-beside’ 97; Being-guilty 111, 113; Being-in-the-world see Being-in-the-world; Being-towards-death see Being-towards-death; Being-with 97, 106; Being-with-one-another see Being-with-one-another; biological model of authenticity 118–20; call to authenticity 111–12; care (Sorge) 118, 201; caring for (Fürsorge) 101; community and 98, 100, 102, 116, 123; conscience 110–14, 121, 137; the ‘crowd’ 142, 144; Dasein see Dasein; death and 25, 93, 98, 104, 105–10, 116; destiny (Geschick) 124; enticement 91, 92, 94; Ereignis 123; ethics 90, 113;

Index 159

everydayness 115, 123, 142; expectation (Erwarten) 118; fate 124; freedom towards death 106, 109; future 115, 118; God 115, 117; Grace 115; guilt 110–14, 115; historicality 116, 121; history 114–17, 143; homecoming 96, 99; ‘idle talk’ 121; 121; inauthenticity 95–6, 122–3; indebtedness (Verschuldung) 113; individualization 114; inevitable sociability of existence 98; irony 92; ‘is’, meaning of 89; ‘is-ness’ (Existenz) 89; literary genres 18; moods 115, 143; Nazism and 117; ‘ownness’/‘mineness’ 94, 96, 97, 98, 101, 111, 115, 116, 120, 121, 133; past and history 114–17, 143; the ‘people’ 142; phenomenological method 91; philosophy, relevance of 90; ‘presence-at-hand’ 94, 100, 101, 109, 117; private existence 98; ‘readiness -to-hand’ 100, 109, 117; ‘resolute rapture’ 115; Sartre and 129, 131, 149; silence 121; states of mind 115; temporality 114–17; temptation (Versuchung) 101–2; the ‘they’ 142, 144, 145; tranquillization 108; voluntarism 120, 123

Heine, Heinrich 12n Henrikson, A. 47n herd morality 58 heroes of authenticity 2–2;

anti-heroes 3, 144, 146; in Camus 3, 4; in Kierkegaard 1; in Nietzsche 1–2; in Sartre 2,

Index 160

see also Abraham and Isaac; Lucien; Meursault/The Outsider; Rieux/The Plague; Roquentin/Nausea; Zarathustra

homecoming: in Heidegger 96, 99; in Nietzsche 75

homo ludens 18 honesty see sincerity and honesty Hong, E.H. and Hong, H.V. 24n, 45, 38, 39, 50n

Howard, R. 167n Hume, David;

human emotions 11; the self 10, 11 Husserl, Edmund 174, 198n; intentionality 132–3; konstituieren 132; transcendental ego 133, 138

identity:

Kierkegaard and 36; Nietzsche and 72; personal 3, 36; Sartre and 150, 154; self-identity 34, 72

individuum, quest for 9 intentionality:

Camus and 178–9; consciousness and 132–4, 135, 146, 154, 157; emotions and 138; Husserl and 132–3; Kierkegaard and 178–9

introspection: Sartre and 134, 138

intuition 98 irony 14, 149, 19–22;

appearance/ essence 29; Camus and 181; cynicism and 29–30; detachment 29; enticement and 29, 48, 50, 202; features of 26; in Heidegger 92; Kierkegaard and 27, 47–50, 56, 58; in Nietzsche 27; nihilism and 27;

Index 161

resignation and 30; ridicule and 27; in Sartre 146, 147, 152; self-detachment 29; self-oriented 29; sincerity and 28–9; Socrates and 27, 49; subjectivity and 50; suicide and 29; unstable 27

Isaac see Abraham and Isaac

Jaspers, Karl 17 Jesus 47, 148 John, S.B. 145n Johnson, Samuel 23n

Kant, Immanuel 57, 70, 95, 115;

categorical imperative 11, 151, 182, 195; enticement 90; ethics 41, 55; intentions 151; kingdom of ends 128, 161, 164; morally autonomous agent 11; objective Good 158; sincerity and honesty 55; transcendental Ego 10, 11

Kaufmann, W. 23n, 65n Kierkegaard, Soren 1, 6, 14–50, 56, 57, 68, 74, 115, 124, 131, 145, 148, 151;

Abraham and Isaac 1, 4, 22, 60–3, 77, 169, 186, 194, 196, 201, 203; the Absolute 62, 63; action 38; aestheticism 55, 58, 153; anxiety 56; Apostle 60–1; Christianity 35, 37, 38, 39, 42, 47; despair 56, 58, 59; dialectic 53; diary novels 21; dread 56; enthusiasm 40; enticement and 34, 40, 42, 43, 44, 48, 50, 55; equality 41; ethics 59, 183; the ethical 56, 59, 62; evocation 92; existential categories 52; extreme situations 26;

Index 162

faith 35, 40, 41, 49, 51, 54, 55, 59, 61, 63, 88, 139, 179; free choice 53; freedom 53; God 54, 63, 117; indirect communication 42, 43, 44; indirect enticement 40, 43; intentionality 178–9; inwardness 9, 36, 38, 40, 44, 46, 47, 49, 54, 79; irony 27, 47–50, 56, 58; knights of faith 1, 4, 22, 60, 62, 63, 169, 178, 194; levelling process 40, 41, 51; life views 52, 53; literary styles 18; love 62; modes of existing 52; objectivity 48, 49; over-reflectiveness 38, 46; passion 38, 39, 40, 47, 49, 54, 55, 58, 59, 62, 136, 139; pathos of faith 40, 45; personal identity 36; philosophical discourse, purpose of 46; pseudonyms, use of 42, 43; purity of heart 54, 179; reason 39; reflection 39–41, 43, 46, 57, 201; relation between life and writings 35–6; religion 35; Romanticism 55; self-creation 54, 56, 63; selfhood 36, 39, 40, 46; on Socrates 51; speculation 46; spheres (Spoere) 52, 53, 55–6; stages (Stadier) 52, 53, 54, 55, 56; subjective inwardness 9, 49; subjective pathos 51, 79; subjectivity 9, 49, 50, 51, 79; to will 54; truth 33, 46–7; values 52; views of life 52; Wittgenstein and 45–6

knights of faith 1, 3, 17, 44, 46, 47, 124, 131, 143

Levinas, E. 93n Lévy, Benny 95, 96, 118 literature 14–22;

author’s point of view 21;

Index 163

biographies 21–22; diary form 21; extreme situations 22–6; first person narration 21; irony see irony; narrative fiction see narrative fiction; plays 22, 187; present tense, use of 21; styles/ techniques 18–19, 193–4

love: Kierkegaard and 62

Lucien/‘The Childhood of a Leader’ 107 –109

McBride, W.L.123n McGuiness, B.F. 49n Macquarrie, J. 93n magic 102, 103 Martin, Wallace 23n master and slave:

Camus and 194; Hegelian 154; Nietzsche and 70, 78, 154, 190; Sartre and 154

Meursault/The Outsider 1, 17, 19, 132–137, 141, 143 models of authenticity see aesthetic model of authenticity; artistic-creative model of authenticity; biological model of authenticity

Muecke, D.C. 23n murder:

Camus and 173, 183, 193; practical nihilism 173

music 107, 150 –151

narrative fiction 150; author’s point of view 21; extreme situations 22–6; first person 21; irony see irony; present tense 21, see also literature

Nausea/Roquentin 104–107 Nazism 46, 116;

Camus and 189–90; Heidegger and 117

Nehamas, Alexander 65n neurosis 60 Nietzsche, Friedrich 1, 17–18, 51–65, 68, 74, 89, 98, 110, 117, 128, 145;

Index 164

alienation 68; amor fati 145, 174; Anti-Christ 73; Appollonian principle 69, 70, 71; artistic model 69, 70–1; attempters (Versucher) 73; biographies 21; biological model 69–70; Camus and 168–9, 192, 193–4; community 79; complete immanence 68; contingency and immanence 143; contradiction 84; cultural conditioning 69; death of God 3, 10, 13, 68, 73; duties 76; educators, choosing 72; egoism 79; enticement 73, 74, 77, 84, 85; eternal recurrence 183; extreme situations 23–4; feeling of power 82; feeling of will 82; ‘freezing’ 77–8, 201; genealogical method 78–9, 81; guilt (Schuld) 113; herd morality 78; history of philosophy 68; homecoming 75; horizon of infinite perspectives 19; irony 27; Kraft/Macht distinction 70; literary style 18; master morality 70; models of authenticity 69–70; negative power 75, 76; negative seduction (Verführung) 73, 94; originality 77; pathos 82–3, 85, 88; perspectivism 84–5; positive enticement (Versuchung) 73; positive power 75, 76, 79; power 75; rationalism and 69; rights 76; salvation 175; Sartre and 149–50; the self 69;

Index 165

self-consciousness 71; self-creation 69; self-identity 72; self-knowledge 69; self-overcoming (Selbstüberwindung) 69, 72, 74, 155; sincerity and honesty 69; slave morality 70, 78, 190; society 80–1; ‘transfiguration of all values’ 81–2; ‘twilight of the idols’ 3, 80; Übermensch see Übermensch; unconscious and 24; unmasking 71, 75, 77, 78; Wahrhaftigkeit (truthfulness) 68; Wahrheit (truth) 68; the will 82–3; will to authenticity 83; will to power 217 70, 82, 83, 122; Zarathustra see Zarathustra

nihilism 20, 127, 135, 141; destructive 186; epistemological 173; ethical 173; metaphysical 173; practical 173, 174, 186, 190, 193

nihilistic cynicism 22

objectivity 2, 6, 14, 20; Camus and 191; Hegelian 41, 44; Kant and 158; Kierkegaard and 48, 49; Socrates and 48

O’Brien, C.C. 145n Olafson, F.A. 146n Olson, R.G. 12n opportunism 10, 11, 12 origin 9, 14 originality 15;

Nietzsche and 77 ought/is 10, 12, 20 The Outsider/Meursault 1, 17, 19, 132–137, 141, 143

Pascal, Blaise 130 –131 passivity:

cynicism and 30 pathos 9, 149;

of the absurd 171, 173;

Index 166

of authenticity 19, 20; of Becoming 29; of faith 40, 45; Nietzsche and 82–3, 85, 88; personal 3; religion 36; subjective 3, 26, 41, 51, 79, 202, 204; will to power and 82

Pears, D.F. 49n personal identity 2;

Kierkegaard 36, see also identity

perspectivism 63 –63 phenomenological psychology 101 phenomenology 97, 98;

Heidegger 91; Sartre and 133, 137, 140, 143, 146, 158–9, 164

The Plague/Dr Rieux 17, 19, 143, 148 Plato 20, 57 plays 17, 138 political action 95, 100, 103, 114, 118 postmodernism 2, 150, 151 poststructuralism 172 –150 psychoanalysis 85;

existential 131, 145, 157, see also Freud, Sigmund

rationalism:

Nietzsche and 69 rationality 2;

Hegel and 9 reason:

Hegelian 38, 39, 41, 52; Hume on 11; Kantian 11, 52; Kierkegaard on 39

Rée, J. 49n, 50n revolutions 10 Richardson, W.J. 93n Rieux/The Plague 17, 19, 143, 148 Rimmon-Kenan, S. 23n Robinson, E. 93n Rorty, R. 69 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 17, 51, 95, 98, 110, 124, 141

St Paul 45 sarcasm 22 Sarraute, Nathalie 106

Index 167

Sartre, Jean-Paul 149, 16, 95–123, 143, 145; aesthetic model of authenticity 131, 140, 145–6, 151, 156–7, 162; alienation 161; anguish 152; anti-semitism 147; autobiography 21; bad faith see bad faith; becoming God 149, 151, 153, 154, 163; Being-for-itself (être-pour-soi) 142, 152, 160; being-for-itself-in-itself 151, 154, 155, 160; Being-in-itself (être-en-soi) 142, 160; biographies 22, 157–60; biological facticity 148; brotherhood 130; Camus and 184–5; character 132; ‘The Childhood of a Leader’/Lucien 146–8; ‘city of ends’ 128, 161; consciousness see consciousness; contingency and immanence 143–4; conversion 130, 157, 160, 162; the ‘crowd’ 142, 144; cultural/historical facticity 148; on Dasein 138; death 144; death of God 10; disgust 142; emotions 131, 37–40; engagement 9, 55; ‘existence precedes essence’ 119, 50, 91; existential psychoanalysis 131, 145, 157; extreme situations 22, 24; facticity 148, 154, 158; freedom 156; freedom and responsibility 152, 160; generosity 163, 164; God and 10, 149, 151, 153, 154, 163; gratuitousness 163; Heidegger and 129, 131, 149; ‘hell’ 137, 154, 164; human reality 7, 130, 148, 150; identity 154; identity of selfless becoming 150; introspection and 134, 138; irony 146, 147, 152; ‘kingdom of ends’ 128, 164; literary styles 18; ‘the look’ 163;

Index 168

love 154; Lucien 146–8; magic 139, 140; Marxism 128, 156, 160, 162; masochism 160; music 145; nausea 142, 143, 145; Nausea/Roquentin 141–6; Nietzsche and 149–50; the ‘Other’ 137, 153, 160; the ‘people’ 142; personal commitment 155; phenomenological psychology 137; phenomenology 133, 137, 140, 143, 146, 158–9, 164; physical facticity 148; plays 22, 187; political action 128, 136, 140, 155, 160; radical conversion 130; reciprocity 161–2, 163, 164; reflected consciousness 134–6; reflecting consciousness 134; Roquentin/Nausea 141–6; sadism 160; salvation 155, 160; the self 132; self-awareness 138; self-creation 133, 145, 149, 157, 161, 163; self-recovery of being 130; sincerity 151, 153–4; sociability 129; social morality 156; spirit of seriousness 153, 157; ‘the Apocalypse’ 128; the ‘they’ 142, 144, 145; transcendental ego 133, 137; transparency of consciousness 138; truth as correspondence 12; unconscious 139; value judgements 156, 158

Schopenhauer, Arthur 146n self 17, 25;

Absolute Self 11; concept of 10, 11; dissolution of 39; hollowness of 24; masks and disguises 24; Nietzsche 69; selfhood see selfhood;

Index 169

Universal Self 11 self-alienation 7 self-analysis 25 self-consciousness:

Nietzsche and 71 self-creation 7, 8, 9;

Kierkegaard and 54, 56, 63; Nietzsche and 69; Sartre and 133, 145, 149, 157, 161, 163; spontaneous 139, 140, 201

self-detachment 22 self-examination 25–26 self-identity 25;

Nietzsche and 72, see also identity

self-knowledge: Nietzsche 69, 71

self-overcoming (Selbstüberwindung): Nietzsche 69, 72, 74, 155

self-questioning 25 self-transcendence 7 selfhood 10;

Kierkegaard and 39, 40, 46 Sicard, Michel 96 sincerity and honesty 6–8, 28, 132, 149;

authenticity and 8–10; bad faith and 153–4; Camus and 181–2, 185; congruence 9, 12–13; correspondence theory 12, 15, 46, 154, 181; as externally imposed constraint 23; Hegelian 55; Hegelianism and 55; irony and 28–9; Kant and 55; Kantian 55; Nietzsche and 69; Sartre and 151, 153–4; Trilling’s definition 8; truth and 8

slave see master and slave Smith, Q. 151n society:

Nietzsche and 80–1 Socrates:

aporia 22; freezing of belief 77–8; irony and 27, 49;

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Kierkegaard on 51 Solomon, Robert 12n, 146n, 151n Spinoza, Baruch 57, 109 Sprintzen, D. 146n Stambaugh, Joan 93n subjectivity 149;

irony and 50; Kierkegaard and 9, 49, 50, 51, 79; subjective pathos 3, 26, 41, 51, 79, 202, 204; truth and 47

suicide 22, 127, 129–130; Camus and 172, 175–7; collective 189; irony and 29; philosophical 174, 175; practical nihilism 173, 174

sun, the: in Camus 4, 186; Zarathustra and 3–4, 186

Taylor, M.C. 47n, 49n Taylor, Charles 150 Thompson, J. 48n transcendental ego:

Husserl and 133, 138; Kant and 10, 11; public scrutiny of 137; Sartre and 133, 137

Trilling, Lionel 6, 8 truth:

as correspondence 12, 46, 154; existentialist revolution and 8; Kierkegaard and 33, 46–7; Nietzsche and 68; sincerity and 8; subjectivity and 47

Übermensch 1, 6, 57, 58, 59, 80, 99, 121, 124;

amor fati 174; enticement and 74; self-consciousness 71; will to power 70, 83

unconscious: Freud and 139; Nietzsche and 24; Sartre and 139

unmasking 11; Nietzsche and 71, 75, 77, 78

Index 171

Vian, B. 22n

Wahl, Jean 47n Westphal, Merold 151n will:

Kierkegaard and 54; Nietzsche and 82–3; to authenticity 83

will to power 52, 61, 62, 90; pathos and 82

Wilshire, Bruce 151n Wittgenstein, Ludwig 45–34, 55, 62 Wood, D. 13n

Young, Edward 50n, 88

Zarathustra 1–1, 17, 54, 57, 60, 63, 129, 144, 148, 150;

the sun and 3–4, 186 Zimmerman, M. 93n, 94n

Index 172

Documents

Existensialism Jacob Golomb-In Search of Authenticity_ Existentialism From Kierkegaard to Camus (Problems of Modern European Thought) (1995)